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ICE BOUND 

In the South Polar Seas 



- From Book of Maxims - 

GOOD DEEDS RING THROUGH HEAVEN 
LIKE A BELL 






























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ice BOUND 



XA1 

SoufkPolar Seas 

by 

ROY" JUDSON SNfiUL 


JKe. BXpI a i>j^cuxHon 
i YuBhor* of 


K0/IMSRTHE' DA1UNCIN 'THE' Fs\JU NORTH , 
ktiVIM&R ANT> HIS THRH/MN© ADVENTURES, 

I/ittep/ boy franceC r\ -—* 


yilvi&trtLtetd bQ 7 ' 

OI/IVE X^CFTS 


AEBBRXAVHI TM^I &CC 
PUBI/ISHEIU 
CHIOAQ O IlylvTAIOlS 






ICE BOUND IN THE SOUTH POLAR SEAS 

Copyright, 1925, by Albert Whitman & Company 
Chicago, U. S. A. 


Other Books That 
Boys Will Enjoy 

By ROY J. SNELL 


STRANGELAND BIRD 
LIFE 

NORTHLAND BIRD 
LIFE 

Net, Each Book, 60c 


By CAROLINE 
SHERWIN BAILEY 


STORIES FROM AN 
INDIAN CAVE 

Net $1.25 

By COBB X. SHINN 


FUN - ARTISTS’ ‘ PIC- 
SHOW BOOK 


This Book Contains 
Shadow Pictures, Tricks, 
Riddles and Many Other 
Good Features. 

Net 60c 


*> » 
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. 

C. 



A BOY’S “JUST RIGHT” BOOK 
PUBLISHED IN THE U. S. A. 


©C1A875566 DEC 19'25 


















FOREWORD 


Nothing, of any real value, as far as the 
author is aware of (and he has had rather 
unusual opportunities for coming into inti¬ 
mate contact with boys’ books), has ever been 
written for boys about the Antarctic regions. 
Yet no field is more interesting nor more fas¬ 
cinating; especially since such men as Scott, 
Amundsen and Shackelton have established 
the fact that the South Pole rests upon a vast 
continent. An imaginary visit to this un¬ 
known continent has, to the writer, the fas¬ 
cination of a trip to the moon with all the 
danger of being entirely wrong about how the 
thing really is, left out. This story is based 
on my own year spent on the shore of Polar 
seas, and upon the records of the best of Ant¬ 
arctic explorers from Charcot to Shackelton. 

The Author. 

















































































THE CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I Antarctic Gold . 15 

II An Adventure with Penguin Poachers.24 

III Shanghaied, Schooner and All. 41 

IV Trapped on the Unexplored Continent.63 

V Don Disappears. 89 

VI A Great Discovery.128 

VII In the Crater of Erebus.149 

VIII Imperiled by Antarctic Sea Gulls.170 

IX Piloted by an Iceberg.196 

X Pendulum Cove.228 



















LIST OP THE ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 


Was a Small Gasoline Schooner.. 14 

Crawling Upon a Cake of Ice. 37 

“Good Old Ole!” Exclaimed Rodger.105 

As He Broke the Last Box Open.179 

Played on a Phonograph.191 

“I Am Glad,” Said Rodger Soberly.225 



















Was a Small Gasoline Schooner 

14 


































ICE BOUND IN THE SOUTH 
POLAR SEAS 

CHAPTER I 


Antarctic Gold 



ELL you boys are 
really going to Decep¬ 
tion Island?” The old 
sailor gazed away at 
the sea with an ex¬ 
pression that told plainer than words 
that he wished that he, too, were sail¬ 
ing for some distant port. 

“I’ve been there,” he said at last, 
turning again to the boys. “Went down 


15 


16 


ICE BOUND 


there on a sealer for the Antarctic. 
Fur-seal we went after, and we found 
them, too! You never heard of fur-seals 
in the Antarctic, did you? Well, there 
was, in those days. There was a time 
when a schooner could bring away ten 
thousand skins in a summer’s hunting. 
That was a little before my time, but 
we took plenty of them; enough, any¬ 
way, to make the old captain rich.” 
The aged man sat in dreamy recollec¬ 
tion of those other days, then, as if 
suddenly reminded of something, he 
sprang from his chair and hobbled 
away to his cabin. 

The old sailor had been an especially 
good friend of the two boys, Rodger 
Brock and Don Ferin, who were about 



ICE BOUND 


17 


to take a trip to Deception Island, which 
lies some hundreds of miles south of 
Cape Horn in the Antarctic Ocean. 
They were at present in the port of 
Punta Ayres. This was, at present, 
their home. Their fathers had become 
interested in a whaling enterprise and 
had moved here from New England. 
From boyhood the boys had all but 
lived upon the sea. At the present time 
they owned a small gasoline schooner 
named the Augusta C. With the help 
of a stalwart Norwegian boy, Ole Jen¬ 
sen, they did a small business of 
freighting along the coast. They had 
just that day received a wireless from 
Don’s father, ordering them to take on 
a cargo of supplies for the whaling 



18 


ICE BOUND 


station on Deception Island and to pro¬ 
ceed south with them at once. 

The boys were thinking of this and 
wishing that the old riches of the Ant¬ 
arctic were still at their disposal, when 
the aged sailor came tottering back. In 
his hand he held a carefully wrapped 
package. 

“I found this down there in the Ant¬ 
arctic, South Shetland Islands, at the 
head of a little inland sea. Pendulum 
Cove they used to call the little point 
of water; just above that in the sand.” 

The boys watched the unwrapping 
of the package with eager curiosity, 
expecting to see some strange fossil 
or some unknown species of mollusk 
shells. But when at last the covering 



ICE BOUND 


19 


came off; and they beheld what had 
long been wrapped there, their eyes 
opened wide in astonishment. Before 
them lay six gold nuggets! 

“You don’t mean,” stammered Don, 
“you don’t mean that you found them 
in the Antarctic?” 

The old man nodded, evidently 
pleased at the boy’s astonishment. 

“And you never went back?” ex¬ 
claimed Rodger. 

“My boy,” said the old man, smiling, 
“a sailor never goes back on a long 
cruise if there’s anywhere else to go. 
I went north next, and all but forgot 
this gold I found there in Pendulum 
Cove. But by and by a comrade of 
mine w T as shipping for the South Seas 



20 


ICE BOUND 


and I told him about it. When he 
came back he said that Pendulum Cove 
had disappeared. And so I suppose it 
had, for the island seemed volcanic. 
There were hot water springs every¬ 
where, and in some places there were 
sulphur fumes coming from cracks in 
the rocks. So that is all I ever thought 
about it till now. And if the Cove’s 
gone, it wouldn’t do any good to go 
back, anyway.” The old man carefully 
wrapped his gold nuggets round and 
round once more, then went tottering 
into his shack, leaving the boys to their 
own thoughts. 

“I think,” Rodger exclaimed at last, 
“that Pendulum Cove looks good to 
me!” 



ICE BOUND 


21 


“I’d rather like to get a look at it 
myself,” admitted Don. “But, of course, 
if that Pendulum Cove has disappeared, 
I don’t suppose there’d be any chance 
of finding—•” 

“Finding tame tigers or trick ele¬ 
phants, or anything like that down 
there,” laughed Rodger. 

But in spite of their gayety the boys 
were bitten by the gold-bug in a more 
serious manner than they were willing 
to admit, and before they finally 
pointed the prow of the little schooner 
to the southward, they had many a 
private conference with the veteran 
seaman. The result was they carried 
away with them some very crudely 
drawn maps, which were after all, 



22 


ICE BOUND 


pretty fair charts of the South Shetland 
Islands and the Antarctic Seas. 

It was some time later that the boys 
found themselves in the region of the 
South Shetland Islands, eagerly scan¬ 
ning the horizon for a first glimpse of 
land. A storm was coming up out of 
the east. With their schooner heavily 
laden and with ample time for complet¬ 
ing their journey to Deception Island, 
they decided, if possible, to seek shelter. 

“Land to the starboard bow!” ex¬ 
claimed Don who was on the lookout. 
As they strained their eyes they could 
make out some snowy peaks rising out 
of the sea. 

On nearing the island they found the 



ICE BOUND 


23 


sea to the south of it blocked with 
ice-floes. 

“Might as well put in at some cove,” 
said Ole Jensen, scanning the shore 
with his glass. “Looks like a chance 
to pull in there at starboard. Once we 
get in there perhaps we can go ashore 
for fresh water and a bit of exercise.” 

“Might get some penguin meat, too,” 
said Rodger. 






CHAPTER II 

An Adventure with Penguin Poachers 

By a careful maneuvering of the 
schooner among the shoals they suc¬ 
ceeded in reaching the island. Having 
anchored their schooner in a little nat¬ 
ural harbor, which was free from ice, 
they went ashore to explore this strange 
land, which had so seldom been visited 
by man. 

“Schooner won’t need much watch- 


24 


ICE BOUND 


25 


ing,” smiled Don. “I don’t believe 
there’s a man within a few hundred 
miles of us, to say the least.” 

“Guess not,” answered Rodger. 

Just then they spied some dark ob¬ 
ject moving along the horizon and knew 
it to be a penguin—one of those queer, 
manlike birds that haunt Antarctic 
lands. 

Knowing that this meant fresh meat 
for supper, and a replenishing of their 
larder, if they caught him, they were 
away at once in wild pursuit. 

They were returning later, each with 
two giant birds thrown over his shoul¬ 
der, when Rodger suddenly stopped 
and listened. 

“What’s that pop-popping sound? 



26 


ICE BOUND 


Why it’s a schooner! It’s our schooner!” 
he exclaimed all in a breath. 

The three boys stood amazed for a 
moment, while they saw the mast of 
their schooner slowly move out to sea. 

“Come on!” called Ole, starting for¬ 
ward. 

But Don called him back. “You for¬ 
get,” he said, “that we are only three 
boys, for the moment alone in this 
empty land. Those are probably des¬ 
perately rough men who have come 
some way overland to this point. We 
can gain nothing by exposing ourselves. 
So long as we are not in sight, they can 
have no means of knowing how many 
there are of us.” 



ICE BOUND 


27 


“But,” Ole said, more soberly, “what 
can we do?” 

That, indeed, was the question. 
Creeping up to a place where they 
could see their schooner through a 
crevice in the rock, the boys saw a 
vicious looking man at the helm, and 
another at the engine, as their schooner 
slowly disappeared around the point 
out of the harbor, they asked them¬ 
selves very solemnly, “What can we 
do?” 

They were here on an island close 
to the Antarctic Circle, without shelter 
and with only one day’s supply of food, 
save for the meat and eggs which they 
might secure from the penguin rooker¬ 
ies. If these men should succeed in 



28 


ICE BOUND 


escaping from the island with their 
schooner, nothing would remain for the 

boj’s but death from exposure and 
starvation. 

“Boys,” exclaimed Ole, at last, “those 
men came to the schooner by land. 
There are no people living on this 
island, we know that. They must have 
come to the island in some way. We 
must back-track them and find out how 
they came here!” 

They set out at once. The schooner 
was now quite out of sight, around a 
rocky point, so they felt safe in follow¬ 
ing the tracks which led over a low 
stretch of land, then across a little 
ridge, to the main coast line of the 
island. As they reached the ridge, 



ICE BOUND 


29 


Iiodger gave a cry of surprise. There 
in a little cove was a small gasoline 
schooner. There was no sign of life 
upon it. It seemed to have been aban¬ 
doned. 

“I wonder if they are coming back 
for it ? We must take possession of it!” 
exclaimed Don, racing forward and 
dragging his companion after him. 

A little dory was on the beach. The 
schooner was anchored with ice-anchors 
to a flat ice-pan not far from the shore. 
The boys were soon aboard her. 

Don rushed to the engine-room and 
gave the wheel a quick, strong turn. 
There was a faint explosion, then the 
engine died. 

“I thought that was it!” he exclaimed, 



30 


ICE BOUND 


throwing his jacket on deck and rolling 
up his sleeves. “They have had engine 
trouble, and to make sure of leaving 
the Antarctic, they have stolen our 
schooner. Now can I get their old boat 
going in time to dodge them?” 

To reach this schooner the men would 
have to pass around a point of land. 
This would consume an hour’s time. 
Already they had been on their way 
a half-hour. 

Anxiously Rodger scanned the point 
of land, while successive bangs and 
loud pop-pops came from the engine 
room. One thing reassured him; the 
storm which had threatened, had passed 
around the island. This they would 



ICE BOUND 


31 


not be obliged to fight. In the interval, 
he had time to realize that the schooner 
was terribly dirty. The air was rank 
with the smell of putrid penguin oil 
and waste. Supposing they did succeed 
in escaping with this schooner, how 
would they fare after that? But he had 
little inclination to consider that ques¬ 
tion. Any schooner was far better than 
no schooner at all in these Antarctic 
Seas. 

But just as he had dismissed these 
thoughts, the mast of their own 
schooner appeared over the point of 
land. Soon they would be in full view 
of the ruffians. 

“What wretched villians they must 



32 


ICE BOUND 


be!” murmured Rodger. “They did not 
mean to leave us a way of escape from 
the island!” 

Don, his clothing and hands grimy 
with the grease, listened for an instant 
to the distant popping of the engine in 
the stolen schooner. Evidently it was 
not working well. With a little burst 
of hope, he bent once more to his task, 
still listening for the sounds from the 
other schooner. There came a succes¬ 
sion of sharp bangs; then all was silent. 
The other engine was dead! 

Realizing now that it was to be a race 
of mechanical skill with the handicap 
decidedly against him, so far as the 
work needed was concerned, Don re¬ 
doubled his energies, while the per- 



ICE BOUND 


33 


spiration poured from his face. With 
one ear he still heard the unsuccessful 
attempt of the bandits to start their 
engine. 

The boys determined to get the aban¬ 
doned engine into perfect condition be¬ 
fore turning the wheel. If they only 
could get a little start of the pirates 
they felt sure they could out-sail them. 
Don had absolute confidence in his abil¬ 
ity to keep the engine going, once it 
was in repair. 

But in a moment’s time all was 
changed. Glancing up, Don saw some¬ 
thing that made his blood chill. On 
the shore, nearer to the men than to 
them, lay a great glacier. Its protrud¬ 
ing giant finger of ice seemed held in 



34 


ICE BOUND 


place by a great iron clamp of rocks. 
But at the inner end of this finger there 
had appeared a narrow crack. And 
even as he gazed, fascinated by this 
natural phenomenon, there came an 
ominous boom from the great mass 
which was about to give way. 

“Boys, quick! Into the forecastle and 
close the hatch!” Gripping the rail of 
the engine room, Don continued to gaze 
at the glacier. There came a boom like 
the report of a cannon, and with a 
mighty grinding swash, the glacier’s 
end gave way and sank into the dark 
waters. Instantly there was a sound 
as of a tidal wave rushing toward the 
boat. In the nick of time, Don slammed 



ICE BOUND 


35 


down the hatch. In another moment 
the schooner pitched as if in the 
clutches of a tornado. Great fragments 
of ice shot into the air and splashed 
down beside the schooner. One of them 
could have crushed the boat like an 
egg shell. Great boulders were torn 
from the bank beneath the glacier and 
hurled seaward, while the wash of the 
semi-tidal waves continued to rock the 
schooner, as if it had been a cork in a 
wash-basin. 

Little by little the waves subsided. 
Don, as he poked his head out, looked 
eagerly in the direction of the stolen 
schooner. He expected to see merely 
a mass of broken boards and timbers, 



36 


ICE BOUND 


or at least a schooner capsized; but 
instead the staunch little boat was still 
rocking in the water. 

But where were the men? He looked 
•long for them, and at last spied one of 
them crawling upon a flat cake of ice, 
with the other swimming not far be¬ 
hind. Evidently they had been too 
intent upon starting the engine to catch 
the warning note of the glacier. A 
little to the right of the men the great 
new iceberg stood against the sky as 
serenely as if it had always been a part 
of the sea. 

Don gave one quick glance at his 
magneto. The other boys, with white 
faces, crept up from the forecastle. The 
magneto was dry. The engine re- 




Craivling upon a flat cake of ice 

37 



















































ICE BOUND 


39 


sponded to the master touch like some 
live thing, glad to be released from its 
bonds. Heading the schooner for their 
own, which was now unmanned and 
drifting, they soon reached it and went 
aboard, examining the engine which 
had refused to respond to the touch of 
the robbers. 

While Don was attending to this the 
other boys again stood on deck enjoy¬ 
ing to the full the surprised look on 
the faces of the men, as they realized 
that they had been outwitted by mere 
boys. 

The engine was soon in order and 
they were face to face with the problem 
of the next move. 

“We can’t leave them to freeze and 



40 


ICE BOUND 


starve,” said Don, “though it is per¬ 
fectly evident that this is just what 
they intended doing to us. We’ll have 
to give them back their schooner, I 
guess, but we’ll take all their fire-arms 
with us and that’ll give them an excuse 
to leave these waters quickly which is 
about what we want of them. They’re 
penguin poachers; that’s what they are 
and no good for any one.” 

The plan was quickly carried out. 
After removing the rifles from the rene¬ 
gade schooner, they allowed it to drift 
towards the ice-cake till they were sure 
it could be reached by its owners. Then 
they set their engine going and went 
pop-popping around the point. 



CHAPTER III 

Shanghaied, Schooner and All 

This little adventure made them more 
cautious in their manner of handling 
their affairs. Evidently, there was not 
a spot on the earth’s surface where they 
could be safe from pirates and vandals. 

Leaving Ole to watch the schooner, 
Don and Rodger returned alone over 
the frozen hills to regain the birds they 
had killed for their supper. 


41 


42 


ICE BOUND 


Having returned to the schooner, 
Rodger watched the antics of some of 
the penguins on shore, while Ole pre¬ 
pared a toothsome meal of meat that 
certainly was strange to both of them, 
and Don gave his engine a thorough 
overhauling. 

“Tired?” asked Rodger after the meal 
was finished. 

“No,” grinned Ole. Don shook his 
head. 

“Then we’ll try to get round this 
island. I’m all for getting this freight 
delivered. Then we may have time for 
a look in at Pendulum Cove and a 
search for our old friend’s mine.” 

Soon the engine was popping while 
they nosed their way cautiously round 



ICE BOUND 


43 

the island. Once the island was passed, 
they found themselves in a wide open 
sea. They traveled for six hours, then, 
the sea being calm, they all turned in 
to sleep. 

They had slept for some time when 
Don was awakened by a succession of 
bumps on the side of the schooner. 
What could it mean? When they had 
turned in there had not been a cake of 
ice in sight. 

He rubbed his eyes and sat up in 
his bunk. The bumping had ceased, 
but he thought he heard steps on the 
deck above. Hurriedly kicking him¬ 
self out of his blankets, he started 
toward the hatch. He was met by the 



44 


ICE BOUND 


gaze of four pair of eyes gleaming out 
from rough, unshaven faces. 

“Come out ’o there!” commanded one 
of the men threateningly. He spoke 
with a Spanish accent. 

Don still blinked unable to under¬ 
stand the situation. 

“Come on! Shake on your boots and 
kick out your partners!” exclaimed the 
spokesman more savagely. “We’ve 
been looking for you!” 

He caught the gleam of a revolver. 
It was evident that these were desper¬ 
ate men and it was wise to obey. He 
shook his companions into wakefulness 
and tried to explain the situation. Ole 
was for a fight at once, but when he 



ICE BOUND 


45 


realized that they were outnumbered 
two to one by armed men, he accepted 
his companion’s counsel and came on 
deck ready to receive orders from this 
strange gang of ruffians. 

As they reached the deck Don caught 
his breath. Away a little at a distance 
lay a great black hull, a steamer. What 
was this, a buccaneer in these wild 
seas? Surely the days for such things 
were past. Still, they w r ere being taken 
from their schooner apparently without 
reason. In vain he tried to reason with 
the men. They had nothing to reply 
save, “Captain’s orders! Captain’s 
orders!” and that was as far as they 
would go toward an explanation. As 
soon as the boys were on board the 



46 


ICE BOUND 


black steamer, there was a ringing of 
bells and the steamer was run alongside 
the gasoline schooner. A hoist was 
lifted, a great beam swung out over 
the sea, and in another moment the 
gasoline schooner was swinging be¬ 
tween the sea and sky. 

“They’re going to take our schooner 
on board!” exclaimed Don. 

It was quite true, for soon the 
schooner shot in over the stern of the 
steamer and was lowered to the deck. 

“What kind of high piracy is this, 
anyway!” exclaimed Don, thoroughly 
enraged. 

“Steady there, lad!” whispered a 
friendly Spanish sailor, “Men have 
been put in chains for less than that.” 



ICE BOUND 


47 


The boy was silent. He realized that 
there was little use of talking. The 
thing to do was to be silent and await 
developments. Every mystery has its 
solution and most often it is found by 
observation. They were in Antarctic 
seas, many miles from an inhabited 
port. The captain of this ship doubt¬ 
less had some reason for shanghaiing 
them, or thought he did. They could 
better clear the matter up when they 
knew under what supposition the cap¬ 
tain was laboring. 

“Send ’em forward.” said the mate, 
who was in command. “There’ll be 
work for them in the morning.” 
Rodger thought he detected a mali¬ 
cious grin on the man’s face. “They’ll 



48 


ICE BOUND 


be needin’ all the rest they can get,” 
he finished, as the boys were led to 
a foul-smelling bunk room where 
three sailors were snoring heavily. 

Ole, with the hardihood of his race, 
was soon snoring as lustily as the 
sailors, Rodger, too, slept, but Don 
could not sleep. His mind went over 
and over the possible motives for the 
actions of this steamer captain. Had 
they been accused of some crime by 
the Chilean Government? Was this 
indeed, a roving renegade steamer? 
Had war been declared between the 
United States and Chile? All these 
solutions and many others presented 
themselves to his mind; but none of 
them seemed at all possible. But for 




ICE BOUND 


49 


that matter, it did not seem at all pos¬ 
sible that they could be shanghaied 
by a steamer. So if these were pos¬ 
sible, any solution of the mystery 
seemed equally possible. At last, in 
utter exhaustion, he fell into a trou¬ 
bled sleep. 

In the morning, after a brief con¬ 
ference, the boys determined that 
they would go to the captain and de¬ 
mand an explanation. But all efforts 
to carry this plan through were 
thwarted. They were guided about 
about by two husky seamen. They 
were treated to a breakfast of pea soup, 
which smelled suggestively of sealoil. 
After this they were led down, down, 



50 


ICE BOUND 


down to the very bowels of the ship 
where swarthy natives were shoveling 
coal into the gaping, flaring mouths of 
the boilers. They were shown shovels 
and told to go to work. 

“They’re going to set us stoking,” 
groaned Don, as he loosened the collar 
of his shirt and took up his shovel. 

Four hours later they were allowed 
to return to the air. They were faint 
from the flaring heat of the fires and 
grimy with coal soot. 

“Whew! I can’t stand much of that,” 
panted Roger as they reached the open 
air. “And if we strike a storm it will 
kill me,” he added desperately, “we’ll 
have to do something soon!” 



ICE BOUND 


51 


As they made their way forward, he 
heard a snap-snap, like the singing of 
a giant locust. Looking up his eyes 
brightened. 

“They’ve got a wireless!” he whis¬ 
pered. 

“What good’ll that do us?” asked Don 
indifferently. 

“I’ll get a message off if I have to 
send it myself in the middle of the 
night and if they make me walk the 
plank for it,” whispered Rodger, strik¬ 
ing the rail with his fist as he spoke. 

“Rodger, is the captain of this ship 
a madman, and are the crew afraid to 
refuse to disobey him?” Don groaned on 
the third day of their captivity, as they 
emerged from the hold to rest them- 



52 


ICE BOUND 


selves from their life-destroying task at 
the fires. 

“If he’s a madman, he doesn’t walk 
much like one,” said Rodger. “There 
he goes now.” True enough, a tall dig¬ 
nified figure was just now rounding a 
corner to his state-room. Don sprang 
forward to intercept him, but a strong 
arm was thrust out to meet him. It 
was the arm of the second mate. Every 
time they had attempted to get in com¬ 
munication with the captain it had been 
the same. 

Fortune had favored them in some 
ways. They had not run into any 
storms as yet, and the ship was not mov¬ 
ing far in a day. That the vessel was 
engaged in the whaling industry was 



ICE BOUND 


53 


confirmed by a report of a small cannon 
from the stern and the subsequent tak¬ 
ing of a whale in tow. 

“He must be insane!” exclaimed Don 
in exasperation. “Think of picking up 
a ship flying the stars and stripes and 
compelling her crew to do stoker’s duty 
in the hold of a whale ship.” 

“That’s just where j t ou make a mis¬ 
take,” said Rodger despondently. “We 
weren’t flying any flag at the time they 
took us in. Don’t you remember our 
flag was torn from the mast by a gale 
and we had none to replace it?” 

Don uttered a low groan as he real¬ 
ized the truth of his companion’s words. 

“I’ll get a message off yet!” Rodger 
said firmly, as he bit his lip. Every 



54 


ICE BOUND 


moment on deck, especially during the 
night, he had watched for an oppor¬ 
tunity to slip into the wireless opera¬ 
ting room and send a message, a call 
for help across the waters. But when 
the operator was away the door was 
always locked. He had attempted to 
make friends with the wireless opera¬ 
tor, who did not understand English, 
but to no avail. There remained but 
one hope that the apparatus should be 
left unguarded for a short time. A brief 
message flashed to the United States 
Consul at Punta Ayres would do won¬ 
ders for them. But would the oppor¬ 
tunity ever come? 

It was in the evening of the third 
day that Eodger, seemingly leaning 



ICE BOUND 


55 


idly against the yard-arm, in reality 
keeping one eye on the wireless cabin, 
saw the operator come from the room 
with a preoccupied air and without 
locking the door, walk toward the Cap¬ 
tain’s cabin. The boy’s heart beat 
wildly. Here was his opportunity. 
For once, the ever-watchful second 
mate was not in sight. With a dash 
he cleared the gang-way and in another 
instant his finger was on the key. 
“Clack! Clack! Clack-clack-clack!” rang 
out the strange voice of the wireless 
across the sea; a short, terse message 
to the consul at Punta Ayres asking 
for help. 

It was all over in an instant and he 



56 


ICE BOUND 


had just scooted to a dark corner be¬ 
hind some life-boats when the wireless 
operator came tearing back to his cabin, 
his face white as a sheet. Entering the 
room he seemed surprised to find no 
one there. Mopping his brow he ex¬ 
amined the instruments closely, and 
even flashed a brief meaningless mes¬ 
sage out to sea. Finding everything in 
order he seemed more composed. Evi¬ 
dently he had not been with the captain 
at the time the message rang out, and 
he settled down at last as if willing to 
ignore the incident rather than face the 
serious charges of neglect. 

“Well, that was easier than I could 
hope it might be!” sighed the young 



ICE BOUND 


57 


amateur, as he joined his companion. 
“If only the Consul gets our message 
we’ll be all right.” 

But as he said thfese words the boy 
suddenly realized that they were sev¬ 
eral hundred miles from Punta Ayres, 
and after the Consul had persuaded the 
easy-going authorities of the Chilean 
Government to take action, it would be 
necessary for a cutter to come all that 
distance to demand their release. That 
all might take a month, and if a storm 
should arise he was sure he never could 
live through it in the hold shoveling 
coal. 

But even as he was thinking of this, 
the wireless again rang out over the 
waters. The operator was flashing a 



58 


ICE BOUND 


reply to some message which he had 
just received. He listened with all his 
ears as he caught the drift of the mes¬ 
sage. It was regarding them, and said 
something about robbers of penguin 
rookeries and cormorant nesting places. 
Rodger began to understand. But who 
could this be who was wiring in regard 
to them? 

They were soon to know. In ten 
minutes the wireless operator hastened 
to the Captain’s cabin and a few seconds 
after that the second mate came for 
the boys. 

“Captain wants to see you!” he said 
in Spanish. 

The boys were soon looking into the 
keen eyes of a Spaniard. He was evi- 



ICE BOUND 


59 


dently a man of intelligence and 
strength of character. 

“It seems,” he said in very good Eng¬ 
lish, “that I have made a very grave 
mistake. For this mistake you were 
partly to blame in not flying your na¬ 
tion’s flag. But that does not make 
amends for the indignity, I have 
brought upon you. I was rash. But 
we have been greatly exasperated by 
the pillagers of the penguin rookeries. 
I took you to be some of these despoil¬ 
ers. You will understand that the sea¬ 
men of the Antarctic in a way depend 
for their lives upon the penguin. If a 
whaling boat or a steamer is wrecked 
on this frozen coast the men may sub- 




60 


ICE BOUND 


sist for a long time on penguin meat 
and eggs. But if the penguin are gone 
there is no hope for them. Men have 
been running in here during the sum¬ 
mer and slaughtering these helpless 
creatures by thousands in cruel pas¬ 
time, and carrying away only such as 
they may take a fancy to. You will 
understand how easy it was for us to 
believe you to be one of these parties. 
You will also understand how desirable 
it would be to teach you a lesson if you 
were the guilty ones. Indeed, we had 
permission from our Government to 
punish you. But now in answer to a 
message, doubtless sent by one of you, 
a fellow whaler tells me that he saw 



ICE BOUND 


61 


you leave Punta Ayres, and assures me 
I have made a grave mistake. Young 
gentlemen, I am at your mercy.” 

The boys retired for consultation. 
When they returned they assured the 
Captain that they would not prosecute 
him. They only asked to be set back 
in the water in their own schooner, with 
fresh clothing to replace that which had 
been ruined in the hold. 

The gratitude of the Captain was 
unbounded at this clemency. He gave 
them new clothing, the best of food 
the ship could afford, and filled their 
gasoline tank with gas for further 
journeys. 

In the days that followed, they 
learned that these two rather startling 



62 


ICE BOUND 


experiences with men who haunt the 
forbidding waters of Polar Seas, were 
the exception rather than the rule. 
The penguin-poachers, and the South 
American whaler had happened upon 
them, much as one’s eye happens upon 
a four-leafed clover. For days on end, 
they saw no one. At times a fog closed 
down upon them. Then they crept for¬ 
ward slowly, expecting at any instant 
to crash into an ice-pan or berg. 

















CHAPTER IV 

Trapped on the Unexplored Continent 

“Don! Don! Come on! Get out of 
here!” 

Don, in an aftercabin berth of the 
Augusta C., stirred sleepily. 

Rodger, who had just called to him 
in excited and insistent tones, now 
came tumbling down the hatch to seize 
his shoulders and shake him vigorously. 
“Don—Don! Come. Boat’s going to 


63 


64 


ICE BOUND 


bust. Come, get out of here quick!” 

Only complete exhaustion could cause 
a boy to sleep at the present moment 
as Don had been sleeping. Thirty hours 
of ceaseless watching had sent him to 
his berth at last, groggy with sleep. 
Nothing short of that could have driven 
the tremendous din about the ship from 
his ears. Such a creaking and groan¬ 
ing, such a grinding and crashing, such 
a booming and bursting as had never 
before been heard outside a battlefield 
had been going on around the staunch 
little schooner for hours. The Augusta 
C. was caught fast in a gigantic Antarc¬ 
tic ice-floe; had been for three days. 
For three days they had been carried, 
helpless in the grip of this floe south- 



ICE BOUND 


65 


ward, ever southward toward the Pole. 
And to what? They could not even 
guess. Somewhere ahead in the course 
of the floe was a vast unexplored conti¬ 
nent; a continent perhaps as large as 
North or South America. The future of 
the schooner and her young owners had 
been totally unknown. 

And now, as Rodger had said, the 
end had come. 

“Hear that!” he whispered as Don 
sat groggily up in his bunk. “It’s the 
end of her, I tell you. Come out of 
here.” 

As the two boys stumbled up the 
hatch the boat gave an almost human 
groan of agony. Then came the crash 



66 


ICE BOUND 


and shudder of breaking hull and snap¬ 
ping braces. 

The craft shot upward and outward. 
Like some steel cylinder slipping from 
the grip of a vice it leaped from the 
icy jaws that had held it and went 
crashing over. 

And there it lay, a crushed and 
broken thing in the very center of a 
wilderness of ice. 

With difficulty the two boys clung 
to the upper rail, to at last lower them¬ 
selves to the surface of the ice. 

There they were joined by a third 
person—Ole. 

“Well, I think that’s the finish,” said 
Ole, removing his cap and scratching 
his head. 



ICE BOUND 


67 


“Yes, Ole, I guess that’s the end,” 
Don mumbled. There was a choke in 
his voice. “She was a good little 
schooner. But then they say, the end 
of one thing is always the beginning of 
another. Perhaps this is a beginning 
and not an end.” 

Had Don realized to what a strange 
and thrilling chain of adventures this 
was the first link, he would certainly 
have had occasion to pause in fear. As 
it was, he was all for action, and action 
was imperative. 

“Got to get her up into the mildle 
of this large flat pan right away,” was 
his terse comment. “Floe must have 
struck land somewhere ahead of us in 
the snow-fog. That’s what made it 



68 


ICE BOUND 


buckle up and smash our boat. It’s 
piling. See that cake over there. Six 
feet through and forty feet wide. Up 
she goes. There she breaks and crum¬ 
bles. If one or two like that pile on 
top of our schooner, we’d never dig out 
as much as one square meal from our 
supplies. Starve right on the spot.” 

“Capstan’s all right,” suggested Ole 
Jensen, the big Norwegian. “Hang the 
anchor over the edge. Hook the cable 
to her. Wind up the capstan. I think 
that would be all right.” 

“Good idea!” exclaimed Rodger. 
“Let’s get to it.” 

Ten minutes later, urged on by 
every turn of the capstan, which though 
lying on its side, still did yeoman duty, 



ICE BOUND 


69 


the schooner was being dragged about, 
stern first, across the broad, flat cake 
of ice. 

In the center of this ice-pan for the 
time being she was safe from the ice 
which was now piling higher and 
higher, one cake upon another in wild 
confusion. 

We ought to be finding out where 
we are,” said Rodger after a moment’s 
rest from turning the capstan. “There’s 
land ahead all right but the snow fog’s 
hid it. We ought to know how far 
away it is and what sort of land. Might 
be a perpendicular wall of red granite 
or the end of a glacier or there might 
be a beach. We may have to leave the 
ice; surely will have to sooner or later. 



70 


ICE BOUND 


Can’t stay out here always. Can’t get 
away now before spring even if the 
schooner can be fixed up. We’re in a 
box all right, but it might be worse.” 

“Tell you what,” he said after a 
moment’s thought, “you fellows can 
watch things here all right; see that 
the boat gets moved if there’s any 
chance of her being crushed. I’d take 
some of the supplies and the blankets 
out of the fore-cabin so you can move 
them quickly in case worst comes to 
worst. And while you’re doing that, 
I’ll try to get across that tumbling pile 
of floes and see what land it is.” 

“You’ll get lost,” grumbled Don. 

“No, I won’t,” said Rodger cheer¬ 
fully. “I’ve my compass, I’ll chart my 



ICE BOUND 


71 


course carefully. I’ll be back, never 
fear.” 

“All right, good-bye and good luck,” 
smiled Don as he turned his weary 
brains to plans for removing supplies 
from the ill-fated schooner. 

Rodger was soon leaping from ice 
pile to ice pile, racing across broad 
stretches of flat ice or climbing some 
crumbling pile of broken ice frag¬ 
ments. His mind too was busy trying 
to picture the shore he w T as approach¬ 
ing. Now he saw within his mind’s eye 
a towering wall of rock and now a 
pebbly beach inhabited by hundreds of 
chattering penguins and now felt the 
chill winds which swept from the end¬ 
less ice fields of some gigantic glacier, 



72 


ICE BOUND 


but even as be dreamed he sped on 
toward his goal. 

As for Don, he was soon engaged, 
along with Ole, in the task of carrying 
heavy cases of canned goods, sacks of 
flour, sugar, ham, bacon and dried 
fruits, together with scores of other 
cartons and packages of various dimen¬ 
sions down a tippy gang plank, to stock 
them in piles on the surface of the ice. 

The monotony of the task gave him 
time to think of the past and, almost 
mechanically, his mind went over the 
events which led up to this, the most 
dramatic and thrilling moment of his 
career. 

The days of travel over calm seas 
following their release from the whaler 



ICE BOUND 


73 


had brought them to a point where they 
must surely have been able to see the 
rocky shores of Deception island had 
not a heavy fog settled down over the 
sea. 

It was at this point that they found 
themselves approaching a broad stretch 
of ice-floes which completely blocked 
their way. This floe was not composed 
of dangerous icebergs but of thousands 
of cakes and ice-pans, six feet in thick¬ 
ness and varying in width from ten to 
five hundred feet. 

Rodger had given orders to skirt the 
floe and attempt to pass around it. This 
course was followed for twelve hours. 
The floe had seemed endless. The fog 
had lifted. They had been able to see, 



74 


ICE BOUND 


across the floe, the cliffs of the island. 
Every moment of their course was car¬ 
rying them away from the island. 
There was little time for reaching the 
island, unloading, and getting back to 
the mainland before the annual freeze- 
up, let alone making their coveted visit 
to the treasure island of Pendulum 
Cove. 

“Looks like a channel straight across 
the floe over there to the right,” Don 
had suggested. 

“Let’s try it,” Rodger had said, giv¬ 
ing the wheel a twirl. 

“I think that will be dangerous,” had 
been Ole’s comment. 

But try it they had. Half way 
through the floe, they had found them- 



ICE BOUND 


75 


selves suddenly closed in upon by 
broad, immovable ice-pans. They had 
been trapped by the floe as many an¬ 
other vessel has been in the past. 

For some time they had hopes of 
poling themselves out but at last had 
realized that the floe was riding one 
of those mysterious currents which 
pass over the waters of the ocean as 
rivers pass over the land; that they 
were being carried, steadily, surely, 
southward toward those desolate frozen 
lands and seas of which next to noth¬ 
ing has ever been known. 

For two days and nights they had 
drifted on. Then a new peril had 
threatened; small icebergs and broken 
fragments reaching ten or more feet 



76 


ICE BOUND 


above the surface of the water and 
many more feet below, urged on by 
some strange undercurrents had begun 
pushing their way in zig-zag courses 
across the floe. The frail craft was 
momentarily threatened by these wan¬ 
dering monsters. Only a constant toil 
with vike poles and guying cables en¬ 
abled them to prevent the catastrophe. 

Hardly had this peril disappeared 
than the ice had begun crowding and 
piling. Then they had known that 
there was land ahead. Then it was that 
the oncoming ice pans had crushed 
their schooner and heaved it high upon 
the ice where it lay. 

“And here we are,” Don grumbled 
to himself. “Don’t know where we are 



ICE BOUND 


77 


but we’re likely to stay here or here¬ 
abouts for at least nine months and 
probably forever.” 

After uttering this rather pessimistic 
comment, he turned once more to his 
task. 

In the meantime Rodger was mak¬ 
ing his way steadily shoreward. Now 
narrowly escaping being crushed by an 
overhanging cake of ice and now leap¬ 
ing a narrow chasm of dark waters 
which waited to engulf him, he hurried 
onward for a half hour, when, on climb¬ 
ing a particularly high and steady ice- 
pile he paused for a glance ahead, then 
caught his breath. 

“Cliffs! Rocky, barren cliffs!” he 
murmured, half in despair. 



78 


ICE BOUND 


On climbing down he found himself, 
much to his delight, on a broad surface 
of ice which was not buckling and 
piling, the solid collar of ice which 
skirted the edge of the cliffs. 

“Well, anyway,” he breathed, “we’ll 
be safe on this for a time.” 

Hurrying across this solid stretch of 
shore-ice, he soon gave a shout of joy. 
Shore was much nearer than he had 
hoped. The cliffs stood back a distance 
from that shore. The real shore was 
composed of a sandy and pebbly beach, 
backed by alternating strips of snow 
and barren land. 

“Land! Land!” he murmured. “Real, 
level land!” and, in his surprise and joy 
he sank for a moment to his knees. 



ICE BOUND 


79 


For a moment he gave himself over 
to reverie and speculation. Was this 
indeed the shore of the great Antarctic 
continent? They had drifted far with 
the floes. Had they passed all islands 
to find themselves at last on the main¬ 
land? He hoped so, for, many had 
been the time he had dreamed of vis¬ 
iting this strangely isolated, uninhab¬ 
ited, frozen continent! 

“Uninhabited. Not a man, not a 
dog, not a living creature of any sort 
except birds,” he exclaimed. “And yet 
a continent, a vast, unknown conti¬ 
nent.” 

As if to give the lie to his words 
there smote his ears a familiar sound. 



80 


ICE B O U N D 


Was it? Could it be? Yes, it was; 
the sound of a dog’s bark. 

“A dog,” he exclaimed. “Where 
there are dogs, there must be men.” 
He hurried forward. 

But again he paused. “Dogs,” he 
mumbled, “perhaps wild dogs or 
wolves. Perhaps, after all, there are 
wolves; dangerous fellows and I’m not 
armed.” 

At once he began to exercise the ut¬ 
most caution. Hiding behind this ice- 
pile, then that one, he at last came to 
the base of a ridge of land. 

Climbing to the crest of this he 
looked about him. 

A quarter mile to the right of him 



ICE BOUND 


81 


was a large penguin rookery; emperor 
penguins they were, huge fellows. 
Three or four feet in height, they strut¬ 
ted about like men, waving their short 
flipper-like wings and chattering con¬ 
stantly. 

To one side he discovered the cause 
of all their excitement. A single dog, 
or was it a wolf? At least a great, 
gaunt, gray creature was attempting 
an assault upon the village. 

For a moment he gave himself over 
to watching this peculiar battle. But 
suddenly he became conscious of the 
fact that the fog had cleared. Glanc¬ 
ing away toward the ocean, he caught 
sight of the schooner, a gray spot on 
a field of ice; saw something, too, that 



82 


ICE BOUND 


caused a groan to escape from his lips; 
an iceberg, born by some undercurrent, 
was pressing down upon the ice-pan on 
which the schooner rested. Some 
seventy feet above the sea it appeared 
to tower almost directly over the ill- 
fated craft. 

“If—if it strikes—we’re lost,” he 
muttered. 

At the same instant his attention was 
attracted by some slight sound behind 
him. Turning quickly he saw, not 
twenty paces away, the gaunt, gray 
creature, who had but a moment be¬ 
fore been annoying the penguins. 
With red tongue lolling and blood¬ 
shot eyes gleaming, he was coming 
straight on. 



ICE BOUND 


83 


The boy’s heart paused for an instant, 
then raced madly. His mind worked 
rapidly. He was alone on a frozen 
continent, unarmed. A savage beast 
was pursuing him. Perhaps there were 
others. He looked about for some 

haven of refuge, but saw none. 

* * * 

At that instant the two boys left 
on the ice-floe beside the wrecked 
schooner, having paused for a moment 
from their labor, were leaning upon a 
pile of cases talking, when, with a 
startled exclamation, Ole pointed to¬ 
ward the sky to the southward. Don 
saw and his lips too parted in an un¬ 
uttered exclamation. 

The sun, sending a broad gleam of 



84 


ICE BOUND 


light across the fog, had tinted a jogged 
crag the white-red hue of molten iron. 

“Land,” Don whispered at last. 

“No—no,” Ole whispered hoarsely. 
“Not land. An iceberg. She is bearing 
down upon us. If she strikes, we are 
lost.” 

“Wha—what can—can we do?” stam¬ 
mered the other boy. 

“Nothing, only wait. Bye and bye, 
if it looks too bad, we may flee, but flee¬ 
ing will do no good. Today we can save 
ourselves, but tomorrow we starve.” 

It was a strange experience; stand¬ 
ing there watching that immense mass 
of ice like some great ocean liner as it 
bore down upon them. Chill after chill 
passed up and down Don’s spine, leav- 



ICE BOUND 


85 


ing him at last feeling white and cold. 

“It’s the currents, the undercur¬ 
rents,” murmered Ole. “They’re push¬ 
ing it on from beneath.” 

The ice-floe which had for the mo¬ 
ment ceased to pile, urged on by this 
great on-moving force, began to pile 
again. A cake six feet through and a 
hundred wide began gliding upon their 
haven of refuge. Slowly, silently it 
tilted upward. 

“The schooner,” exclaimed Ole. “That 
cake will crush it. We must save it.” 

He rushed for the capstan and began 
to wind it. Reluctantly, Don followed 
his example. Slowly the schooner 
moved forward. Slowly but surely the 
cake gained upon them. Now it was 



86 


ICE BOUND. 


ten feet away, now five, now three. And 
now—now it towered above the prow 
of the schooner. And above all, men¬ 
acing, threatening, hovered the iceberg, 
which by now had changed to a dull 
blue thing like chilled steel. 

“Come on,” said Don. “We’ll be 
killed.” 

Doggedly, as if not hearing him, Ole 
turned at the capstan. 

Don leaped. He was off the schooner. 
Then things began to happen. The 
great cake of ice, lurching forward, fell 
with a grinding sound across the prow 
of the schooner. The air was filled with 
bits of ice. A wild gust of sleet like 
snow hailed down upon him. He was 
thrown flat upon the ice. 



ICE BOUND 


87 


At that instant there came a sound 
as of violent cannonading. This was 
instantly followed by such a grinding, 
howling, screeching pandemonium as 
Don had never experienced. Then 
came a furious rocking of the cake of 
ice on which he rested. Tipping at an 
angle of forty-five degrees, it swayed 
from side to side, then plunged with a 
great swash into the briny water. It 
seemed inevitable that they, the 
schooner, and all should be piched into 
the sea. He had given himself up as 
lost when, of a sudden, he found him¬ 
self buried in snow and fragments of 
ice. A large bit struck him on the 
head. For a moment he lost conscious- 



88 


ICE BOUND 


ness. When he came to himself all 
was quiet, quiet as the grave. 

Madly he groped in his mind for 
ideas adequate to express that which 
had just happened. Then he fell to 
wondering. Where was Ole? What 
had happened to the schooner? He 
attempted to rise. Then cold perspira¬ 
tion sprang out upon his brow. He 
could not move. He could not stir an 
inch. Some great weight was crushing 
the breath out of him. 



CHAPTER Y 

Don Disappears 

When Rodger found himself facing 
the wild-eyed and evidently famished 
creature, which from his shaggy gray 
coat might be taken for either a wolf 
or a dog, he found himself at his wits’ 
end. To flee seemed senseless. The 
creature would easily overtake him 
and spring upon his back. The hard- 
packed snow beneath his feet revealed 


89 


90 


ICE BOUND 


no possible weapon of defense, not so 
much as a rock. 

He threw one glance behind him. A 
rugged cliff of granite flanked the slop¬ 
ing hillside on which he stood. With 
his back to this wall he would be bet¬ 
ter able to defend himself. After hav¬ 
ing taken his clasp-knife from his 
pocket, he began backing away toward 
the cliff. The wild creature appeared 
to view this action with suspicion. He 
followed slowly but kept a certain dis¬ 
tance between them, some ten paces. 

Rodger kept his eyes constantly upon 
him. It was ticklish business, this 
backing away over unknown snow 
banks without seeing where one was 
going. He might at any moment trip 



ICE BOUND 


91 


over an unexpected ridge or hollow 
and go sprawling. And, if he did, 
there could be no question that with 
three bounds the beast would be upon 

him. 

With heart beating madly, with toes 
a-tremble he took each step with cau¬ 
tion. Each moment seemed an hour, 
each rod a mile, but at last he felt the 
brush of rock against his back and 
knew he had made his objective. 

This appeared to displease the dog, 
for he let out a threatening growl and 
lessened the distance between them by 
half. Measuring his strength against 
the possible powers of this dog-wolf, the 
boy braced himself for the struggle 
which seemed certain to come. Bar- 



92 


ICE BOUND 


ring accidents, he believed he would 
win the battle, but realized that he must 
be terribly mangled doing it. 

The creature had settled down on his 
haunches. His head was an ugly sight. 
It was raw and bleeding in places where 
the giant penguins had beaten him off 
with their powerful flippers. 

When Rodger could stand the strain 
no longer, he began talking to the 
animal as one might reason with a 
madman: 

“Get out, can’t you? You’re some 
kind of a dog. Can’t be a wolf, for 
there’s not a quadruped native to this 
land. Yes, you’re a dog. Had a mas¬ 
ter once, didn’t you? He was a man; 
a man, I tell you! And I’m a man 



ICE BOUND 


93 


Your master brought j 7 ou here. You 
ran away like as not, but that’s no rea¬ 
son why you should wish to eat me 
now. Come, come, let’s be friends.” 
He put out a hand. 

The answer was a start back and an 
angry growl. The next instant the 
creature gave a forward bound. Catch¬ 
ing his breath and gripping the hilt of 
his knife until it fairly cut into his 
hand, the boy waited the final struggle 
which he felt should come quickly. 

Then a strange thing happened. The 
dog started and cocked his head on one 
side as if hearing sounds behind him. 
Then he half turned about. 

Instantly Rodger saw what had dis¬ 
turbed him. A tall mother penguin 



94 


ICE BOUND 


was toiling laboriously up the slope. 
In her beak was a large fish, freshly 
taken from the sea. 

Before the boy could realize what 
was happening, the dog was away with 
a bound. Seeing this on-rushing fury, 
the penguin, with an angry squeak, 
dropped the fish and prepared to de¬ 
fend herself. 

The dog paid not the least attention 
to her protestations, but seized the fish 
and dashed away over the slope. He 
was followed by the still protesting 
housewife of the penguin village. 

For a moment, Rodger could scarcely 
realize that he was free to go his way. 
When he did realize it, he hurried down 
to the ice-field and quickly lost him- 



ICE BOUND 


95 


self among the heaped up piles which 
lay all about him. As he did so a scrap 
of a poem taken from his school days 
was upon his lips: 

“Take, eat,” he said, “and be content, 
These fishes in your stead were sent 
By him who sent the tangled ram 
To spare the child of Abraham.” 

* * * 

Hardly had Don over by the schooner 
realized that he was pinned fast to the 
ice than he felt the burden on his back 
ease away for a second, then settle back 
with an almost crushing force. He 
thought he heard a grumbling sound; 
then all was silence. For fully a mo¬ 
ment he endured the crushing force 



96 


ICE BOUND 


which seemed destined to drive the last 
breath of air from his lungs. Then, 

just when he was about to give up hope, 
the weight suddenly lifted and did not 

return. 

Shaking the ice debris from oft him, 
he sat up dizzily. He opened his eyes 
and stared about him. Ole, with a pike- 
pole in his hand, was bending over him. 
To the right of him was a large frag¬ 
ment of blue, fresh-water ice. 

“Wha—what happened?” he was able 
to stammer. 

“Bloomin’ iceberg struck bottom and 
floundered. Then she split in two and 
tipped over. Might have been the death 
of us, but she wasn’t. Worst that hap¬ 
pened was that piece there dropped 



ICE BOUND 


97 


over here and tipped onto you. Lucky 
she didn’t strike you square. Hurt 
any?” 

Don felt himself over carefully. 
“Think not. Few bumps, that’s all.” 

“We’re fortunate. That’s all I’ve got 
to say,” exclaimed Ole. “Thing that 
might have destroyed us has made us 
safe.” He pointed away at the gigantic 
pile of blue ice that lay away from 
them some two hundred fathoms. 
“She’s grounded good and hard, high 
tide too. We’re in a sort of bay; regu¬ 
lar little harbor. There’ll be no more 
ice-piling. Iceberg won’t let it by. 
Freeze up pretty soon. Fifteenth of 
March now. By the first of April 
winter’ll be down in earnest.” 



98 


ICE BOUND 


“Wint—winter,” Don scratched his 
head. “April? Winter?” Then he 
threw back his head and laughed. “I 
can’t seem to* remember we’re in the 
Southern hemisphere. Of course it will 
be winter by April and by June it will 
be 50 below 7 zero.” 

“Sure,” grinned Ole, “and there’s 
land over there where Rodger’s gone. 
Fog’s lifted. Look! Over there’s a 
lot of cliffs and tall mountains. We’ll 
get our supplies over there and build a 
cabin out of this wreck. We’re good 
for two years anyway, and w 7 ith pen¬ 
guin, seal meat and the like we might 
make it even as much as five or six.” 

“Five or six years!” Don groaned. 

“Sure, why not?” came a laughing 



ICE BOUND 


99 


voice from behind him. It was Rodger. 
“Just think,” he went on, “of the won¬ 
derful discoveries we might make in 
that time on this unexplored continent. 
Annual summer trip to the South Pole 
and all that! Wonderful experience, 
I’d say!” He slapped Don on the back. 

“And what’s more,” he went on in 
a moment, “I’ve just had a narrow 
escape from some sort of savage, wild 
dog.” 

“A dog? Dog?” the others echoed. 

“Yep; a sure enough dog.” 

“We’ll catch him and tame him,” 
cried Ole enthusiastically. “Perhaps 
there are others. We’ll have a team 
for freighting.” 

“I’m not so sure about that,” Rodger 



100 


ICE BOUND 


shook his head. “At any rate, I’d 
donate to you the task of taming him. 
He gave me one fright of my life and 
one’s enough. Say! You fellows had 
anything to eat? I’m starved.” 

If order is Heaven’s first law, then, 
more often than not, a good square 
meal is the first move toward restoring 
order out of chaos. Everything about 
the wrecked schooner was in disordered 
heaps, but out of these heaps the boys 
managed to extract a gasoline stove 
and the makings of a credible “Mulli¬ 
gan” stew. When this had been de¬ 
voured, things seemed half set to rights. 
They found it possible to imagine that 

they had come to this spot of their own 
free will and had not been carried and 



ICE BOUND 


101 


dumped here by unreasoning Mother 
Nature. 

“Next thing’s a good sleep,” said 
Rodger emphatically. “I think Ole is 
right; there’ll be no further disturbance 
for the present at least. We’ll arrange 
some of these cases in the form of a 
square with a layer in the middle for 
a bed and, after piling it full of blank¬ 
ets, pull a canvas over it. Then you 
fellows can crawl in there and sleep. 
I’ll stand watch for four hours. Ole, 
jmu’ll take the next watch and Don you 
the last. When that’s over, we’ll be 
ready for work, and work it will be, 
getting our stuff over that junk pile of 
ice.” 

Morning found them greatly re- 



102 


ICE BOUND 


freshed. The air had cleared com¬ 
pletely. They were able to see the 
ragged shore of the land they had dis¬ 
covered, for perhaps twenty miles up 
and down the coast. 

“It’s the continent, sure as any¬ 
thing,” exclaimed Rodger. See that 
long range of mountains in the dis¬ 
tance? Nothing like that on any of the 
islands. I’ve read the explorers; Jean 
Charcot and all the rest. None of them 
tell of a range like that on the islands. 
And there’s one of these mountains, 
got a sort of white cloud hovering over 
it all the time, must be a volcano; active 
one too. There are some on the conti¬ 
nent. I say we’ll have a grand time 
exploring.” 



ICE BOUND 


103 


“Exploring’s all right,” said. Don, 
“but I wish the schooner wasn’t so 
frightfully smashed. I’d like to think 
about getting away when the ice breaks 
up in the spring.” 

Al l three of the boys walked around 
to what had been the prow of the boat. 

“Cut it oft clean as if it had been 
sawed,” said Rodger, jerking his thumb 
at the yawning hole where the prow 
had been. The ice-pan had not only 
cut oft the entire prow but had ground 
it into kindling. 

“That’s nothing to what it would have 
been if Ole hadn’t risked his neck wind¬ 
ing the capstan,” said Don. “Whole 
thing would have been ground to 
powder and all that’s left on board.” 



104 


ICE BOUND 


“Good old Ole!” exclaimed Rodger, 
placing an appreciative hand on his 
shoulder. “But even at that, I don’t 
think we’ll ever be able to put her in 
shape to float again; not with the ma¬ 
terial we have at our disposal.” 

“I say!” exclaimed Don suddenly. “If 
there’s a dog over there, there might 
be an expedition somewhere near.” 

“Sorry to disappoint you,” smiled 
Rodger, “but there hasn’t been an Ant¬ 
arctic expedition for several years; the 
war put an end to that sort of thing.” 

“Anyway,” insisted Don, “an expedi¬ 
tion must have landed here at some 
time or other, perhaps wintered near 
here. If we can find their old camp, 
who knows what they may have left 











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K 

®v vSM 



pfflpa 

V^tel i: 

£35v5#i 




“Good Old 


Ole!” Exclaimed Rodger 





105 



























ICE BOUND 


107 


behind? Might even have left a pieket- 
boat or something. Charcot left a gaso¬ 
line engine and a number of other 
things on his first visit to the Antarctic 
and picked them up on his second ex¬ 
pedition.” 

“You might be right,” said Rodger. 
“Anyway, it’s worth looking into.” 

When they at last set to work mak¬ 
ing up packs of blankets, cooking 
utensils and food for a trial trip to 
land, they found themselves in high 
spirits. It was almost as if news had 
arrived that there was a group of white 
settlers living in cabins right over the 

ridge beyond the point. 

* * * 

Three months later Don found him- 



108 


ICE BOUND 


self making his way cautiously over the 
surface of a glacier. Only the moon 
and stars gave him light; but these, 
shining as they did, on the glistening 
whiteness all about, made it seem light 
as day; the shadows were deeper, the 
light paler, that was all. 

He was on one more search for that 
former camp of a polar expedition 
which they all felt sure must exist 
somewhere along the shores of this, 
their continent. Forsaken as it had 
been long ago by some explorer, he felt 
sure that there must have been some 

S 

articles of interest and value left be¬ 
hind. 

His mind, as he made his way across 
the glacier, was busy with many 



ICE BOUND 


109 


thoughts. Somehow, he felt in a vague 
sort of way that important events were 
to transpire on this day, he would dis¬ 
cover the lost camp perhaps; who could 
tell*? There were times when the whole 
affair seemed terribly unreal to him. 
The very thought that there could be 
a vast continent stretching a thousand 
miles and more to the south, east and 
west of them with never a soul living 
on it save themselves, seemed impos¬ 
sible. 

The other boys had long since fully 
accepted it as a fact. Ole had interested 
himself in their winter camp. They 
had all worked hard at it for a time. 
The ice between the schooner and shore 
had frozen solidly together almost at 



110 


ICE BOUND 


once. They had constructed rude sleds 
and had cut a rough path to shore. 
Over the path they had dragged all 
their supplies and, with infinite labor, 
had brought all the parts of the crushed 
schooner after them. From the wreck¬ 
age they had constructed a cabin. From 
empty gasoline cans Ole had fashioned 
a great heating drum which he fitted 
over their gasoline stove. There was 
an abundant supply of gasoline so that 
they would not freeze, but Ole had sup¬ 
plemented this with oil taken from 
seals killed along the floes. 

Out of the depths of a solid bank of 
snow they had cut them a store-room 
for supplies of fresh meat. Quantities 




60 

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<13 

'e 


© 

o 

S 

so 

8 

© 

o 

-© 

© 

.8 

© 

r8 

&H 


111 















































































































































1 






































































































































































































































ICE BOUND 


113 


of seal and penguin meat were stored 
here against the day when the penguins 
were all gone north to warmer climes 
and the seals had disappeared. 

Now that they were snugly “tucked 
in” for the winter, Rodger had turned 
his attention to securing interesting 
geological and mineralogical specimens 
of this little-known land. One day he 
would appear with some strange, new 
species of fish forcibly obtained from 
some irate penguin who had been down 
to the sea for his dinner. Next day he 
would tell of having discovered what 
appeared to be a beautifully green, 
grass-grown valley, only to find on ap¬ 
proaching it that it was a stretch of 



114 


ICE BOUND 


barren rock and snow ridges completely 
buried with millions of tiny green 
diatoms. 

“Think of it!” he had exclaimed that 
night, “a whole continent without a 
tree, a bush, a flower, or even a blade 
of grass on it! Not that it wouldn’t 
grow, either. Charcot’s men raised 
flowers, omons and cress on this soil 
under glass. No seed, never been any 
seed brought here; I guess the answer. 
Plenty of grass in North Polar lands.” 

But, though Ole found himself quite 
happy keeping camp and Rodger in 
studying nature, Don had never quite 
settled himself to the facts and condi¬ 
tions as they were. 



ICE BOUND 


115 


“Hang it all!” lie had exclaimed at 
times, “it seems so almighty unreal. 
We’ve proof enough that people have 
been here. Why can’t we find where 
they have been?” 

Their proof that they had been here 
was the “Outlaw,” as they had come to 
call the wolf-dog who at times haunted 
the outskirts of their camp. 

The supposition that this dog had 
gone completely wild had proven cor¬ 
rect. Not only were they not able to 
make friends with him, but at times, 
as in the first instance of Rodger’s meet¬ 
ing him, he assumed a menacing at¬ 
titude. 

“He’s dangerous; he is!” Ole had 



116 


ICE BOUND 


stated stoutly more than once. “We 
ought to shoot him and put him out 
of his misery!” 

“Oh, no, you can’t quite do that,” 
Don had always replied. “Just think, 
he’s the only land animal besides our¬ 
selves on all this continent. He, like 
ourselves, once lived in a land of sun¬ 
shine and flowers.” 

There the question had always been 
dropped, but when they went on long 
trips they never failed to at least pro¬ 
vide themselves with pistols. 

“You never can tell when that Out¬ 
law’ll show up,” Ole put it. 

And Don, as he made his way across 
the glacier, turned every now and then 
to look back. He was thinking of the 



ICE BOUND 


117 


Outlaw. Perhaps it was this or his pre¬ 
occupation which caused the disaster 
which ultimately befell him on that 
day. 

He was thinking of their former at¬ 
tempts to discover the camp of the ex¬ 
plorers. They had all gone in enthusi¬ 
astically for the search at first; all in 
their imaginations had seen an empty 
hull stranded on the beach; just the 
thing they needed in which to install 
their engine and to go pop-popping 
away into open water when spring 
came. But when, on forced marches 
of two and three days over towering- 
precipices and yawning glaciers, they 
had gone up and down the coast for 
twenty miles without discovering a 



118 


ICE BOUND 


single trace of human life, their en¬ 
thusiasm had abated and Don alone 
had kept up the search. His sole hope 
lay in the fact that the camp might be 
nearly buried in snow and was to be 
found only by a more careful search. 

The surface of the glacier, which ran 
a hundred or more feet above the level 
of the sea, was crossed and recrossed by 
yawning crevasses. Some of these Don 
was able to step across with ease, some 
required a springing leap, and some 
he must follow along for a consider¬ 
able distance before finding a safe 
crossing. 

He had wound his way in and out 
among these when, at last, he came to 
what appeared to be a broad stretch 



ICE BOUND 


119 


of unseamed ice covered over with a 
coating of snow. 

Had he not been thinking so seri¬ 
ously of many things, he might have 
suspected danger in the midst of false 
security. 

He did, indeed, suspect danger, but 
from the wrong source. Having caught 
some sound behind him, he was search¬ 
ing the ice for some sign of the skulk¬ 
ing gray form of the Outlaw, when, 
with a sickening glide, he felt the snow 
crumble away beneath his feet. With 
a cry of dismay he felt himself shoot 
swiftly downward to dark depths be¬ 
low. An icy crevice had been thinly 
coated over with hard-packed snow. 
Under his weight this insecure crust 



120 


ICE BOUND 


had given way. He was shooting down¬ 
ward. To what? He could not tell. 

* * * 

When Don had been absent from the 
cabin ten hours his companions began 
to be worried about him. Two hours 
later Rodger was pacing the floor and 
at the end of another hour he drew 
on his parka, and with a “Come on, 
Ole; something has happened to him,” 
made his way out into the moonlight. 

“It’s that dog,” grumbled Ole, An¬ 
gering the trigger of his rifle. “If ever 
I lay eyes on him again he’s a dead 
one. I always knew he’d do for some 
one of us.” 

To the boys the great silence of those 
untenanted shores seemed weird and 



ICE BOUND 


121 


unnatural. A great foreboding came 
over them and they were silent as the 
ice-locked sea. 

They had taken the beach trail and 
at every turn of a rocky point expected 
to catch the long-drawn, mournful wail 
of the Outlaw as he lifted his voice to 
the silent night in his song of the frozen 
South. Down deep in his heart each 
boy expected to catch in the distance 
the fiery gleam of his eyes and to hurry 
up only to find him crouching over the 
torn body of their fallen comrade. 

When, at last, they came upon his 
tracks, it was as if their expectations 
were beginning to be fulfilled. Eagerly, 
but with great dread, they followed his 
footprints. When they had followed on 



122 


ICE BOUND 


for a mile or more, the track suddenly 
turned to the right, leading away out 
upon the frozen sea. 

“Better go on down the beach a way,” 
said Ole. “He’ll most likely wander 
around out there then turn back to the 
shore.” 

This prophecy proved correct. A 
quarter mile on down the beach they 
did come upon his tracks once more. 

“But what is this?” said Rodger, 
pointing to a dark spot in the snow be¬ 
side the track. 

“Blood,” said Ole, after examining 
it carefully. 

“He’s made a kill and is carrying 
away some meat. Perhaps crabbing 
seal.” 



ICE BOUND 


123 


“I’m not so sure.” 

“Sure of what?” 

“Come on,” Ole hurried rapidly for¬ 
ward. 

At every step they saw drops of blood 
frozen into the snow. Rodger shivered. 
It was ghastly, this following a living 
thing in and out among those shadows 
with drops of blood on every yard of 
the trail. 

Suddenly, as they rounded a point, 
Ole stopped abruptly. 

“There he is,” he whispered, jerking 
* 

his thumb to the right, where a dark, 
gray object broke the even whiteness 
of the snow. 

“Easy now”—Ole cocked his rifle. 

On tip toes, with bated breath, they 



124 


ICE BOUND 


approached the silent figure. As they 
came nearer they saw that he was lying 
stretched out at full length with fore¬ 
paws reaching out as if to grasp some¬ 
thing. 

Ole did not pause until he was near 
enough to touch him with his rifle. 
Then he poked his rifle against the 
animal’s ribs. 

Rodger sprang back. 

Ole uttered a low, harsh laugh. “No 
fear,” he muttered, “He’s dead.” 

“Dead?” Rodger shivered. 

“Dead and frozen stiff.” 

A chill ran up Rodger’s spine. This 
creature was dead. But a few hours 
before, there had been four living crea¬ 
tures on this frozen continent who had 



ICE BOUND 


125 


felt the breath of a spring breeze in 
the land of sunshine and flowers. Now 
there were but three. Who would be 
the next? Was Don already gone? 
What did it matter now—that Ole had 
sworn to kill the Outlaw? He was 
sorry. 

“Question is,” said Ole huskily, bend¬ 
ing over to examine the dog, how’d he 
come by his death. Been in a big scrap. 
He’s all cut and torn. Question is, was 
it a sea-leopard or Don that cut him 
up; and if it was Don, how’d he come 
out? That’s what we must find out.” 

“Only way to find out is to back trail 
him on the ice floes.” 

“I’ll go back there,” said Ole, “you 
might take a turn up on the cliff and the 



126 


ICE BOUND 


glacier; might see some signs up there. 
Be back here in three-quarters of an 
hour.” 

They separated at once. 

Rodger had not been on the surface 
of the glacier ten minutes when he 
came upon the imprint of Don’s alpine 
staff in the snow. Eagerly then, he 
hurried forward, glad to know that, at 
least, if his companion had perished, 
the Outlaw was not responsible for his 
death. 

Don’s zigzag track was hard to fol¬ 
low. Often he lost it and was obliged 
to search for five minutes. Here a 
shadow deceived him. Now the moon 
went under a cloud and left all in dark¬ 
ness. Perplexed, exasperated yet eager, 



ICE BOUND 


127 


he pressed on. Twenty, thirty, forty 
minutes passed. Then suddenly, with¬ 
out warning, he came upon the end of 
the trail. 

There he stood, stunned, motionless, 
unable for a moment to move or speak. 
Then with a wild wail of despair he 
threw hiself flat upon the hard-crusted 
snow to creep to the edge of the dark 
hold that yawned before him and to 
call again and again. 

“Don! Don! Oh Don!” 

But the only answer that came back 
to him was the echo and re-echo of his 
own voice as it was cast back and forth 
by the flinty walls of that awful icy 


canyon. 



CHAPTER VI 

A Great Discovery 

When Don felt his footing give way 
and knew that he was about to plunge 
downward to the very heart of the gla¬ 
cier, he threw out his right hand in an 
attempt to grasp the wall of the crevice. 
His grip on the smooth surface lasted 
for but an instant. Then, with a sud¬ 
den intake of breath, he sensed the cold 
air rushing by him. Before he could 


128 


ICEBOUND 


129 


realize what had happened, he felt him¬ 
self jammed solidly down between the 
two walls of the crevice which come 
closer and closer together as they ap¬ 
proach the base of the glacier. 

He was dressed in sealskin coat and 
trousers, made for him by Ole, who had 
once lived with the Laplanders. The 
tough skin in these garments protected 
his flesh from the ugly cuts which it 
must otherwise surely have received, 
for he had fallen fully forty feet. 

His attempt to save himself by grip¬ 
ping the rim of the crevice had been 
futile yet that movement was doubtless 
the means of saving his life at least. 
When he had fully recovered his senses, 
he found himself so tightly jammed into 



130 


ICE BOUND 


the crevice that he at first did not ap¬ 
pear able to move a muscle. 

For an instant dark dread of being 
held in this icy grip until, chilled 
through and through, he at last would 
lose consciousness never again to see 
sunlight, flashed through his mind. 
But, being of a hopeful turn of mind 
and a fighter by nature, he braced him¬ 
self for a desperate struggle. 

A calm and careful survey of his con¬ 
dition revealed the fact that his right 
hand was sticking straight up, just as 
it had been when he lost his hold on 
the edge of the crevice. Every attempt 
at movement cost him a groan of pain, 
for he was bruised and cramped to an 



ICE BOUND 


131 


almost unbearable degree. He did find, 
however, that he could swing his right 
arm downward until it extended 
straight before him. 

In his belt, over his right front 
trousers’ pocket there hung a small axe. 

“Now,” he told himself, “if only I 
can get my hand down to that axe I 
may be able to improve my position.” 

For a full half hour, he struggled, to 
achieve this apparently simple feat. 
All the time his limbs, pressed upon on 
both sides as they were, were becom¬ 
ing more and more benumbed with 
cold. 

“I got—got’a work fast,” he mum¬ 
bled. 



132 


ICE BOUND 


At last, with a supreme effort, he 
brought his hand into contact with the 
head of the axe. 

Then there followed an agonizing 
ten minutes in which he worked the axe 
from its leather loop. Appalled at the 
very thought that, at the last moment 
he might fumble and drop the axe, he 
felt the cold perspiration stand out on 
his forehead. Yet, slowly, surely his 
benumbed fingers gripped the handle 
of the prize. 

“Now, what to do with it?” he whis¬ 
pered to himself. 

At once he resolved what to do. He 
would attempt to cut a hole in the icy 
wall, just at the highest possible reach 
of his right hand. When this was done, 



ICE BOUND 


133 


he would attempt to draw himself out 
of the trap. 

Tap—tap—tap went the axe. 

Fine shivers of ice came sifting down 
upon him, glided down his neck. To 
these he gave little heed; he was mak¬ 
ing headway. There was hope yet. 

Three times he worked the axe into 
the pocket of his coat; three times at¬ 
tempted to lift himself free and three 
times failed. But the fourth attempt 
brought relief. He lifted himself a few 
inches. His left arm was free. 

Five painful moments followed in 
which he brought that half-frozen mem¬ 
ber back to life, holding on desperately 
the while with his right. 

When this was accomplished, he 



134 


ICE BOUND 


gripped the axe with his left hand and 
cut a hole for his right foot. Here 
again he was balked; his foot was too 
much benumbed for action. 

In time, however, he did secure a 
footing and, by exercising first one, 
then the other of his limbs, he brought 
all his muscles back to form. When 
this was accomplished he breathed a 
sigh of hope and proceeded to survey 
his surroundings. Above him towered 
two icy walls. To strive to make his 
way up was to attempt a perilous, per¬ 
haps impossible, thing; another glide 
like the last one and he would not find 
himself possessed of sufficient strength 
for the battle. 

Before him, a long way off, lay a 



ICE BOUND 


135 


narrow line of light. This he knew to 
be the end of the crevice where the 
glacier faced his sea. To work his way 
out by cutting notches in the ice, step 
by step, appeared an almost endless 
task. But a white line at the foot of 
the crevice gave him hope. This line 
began some fifty feet away. Was it 
snow ? If snow it was, and hard-packed 
enough to allow him to walk upon it, 
his troubles were ended. He resolved 
to attempt it. 

Slowly, foot by foot, he made his way 
to that point; then, with trembling 
heart, he put his foot upon the snow 
which had blown in, and partly filled, 
the crevice. 

To his great joy, he found it quite 



136 


ICE BOUND 


solid. Edging his way outward, foot 
by foot, he at last found himself stand¬ 
ing on the top of a small mountain of 
snow, looking away over the silent sea. 

Almost involuntarily he drew his cap 
from off his head and stood there in 
awed reverence while his lips stam¬ 
mered words of thanks. 

For a moment only, he stood there; 
then, realizing that he would be late in 
reaching the cabin; that his com¬ 
panions would be worried, he hurried 
down the snowy slope to search for a 
safe path back up the slope. 

Much to his surprise, he found him¬ 
self on a narrow stretch of shore which 
they had never visited; indeed, so nar¬ 
row and so snow-covered it was that 



ICE BOUND 


137 


they had believed that along this 
stretch of rocky cliff there existed no 
beach but that, in summer, the waves 
beat square against the granite wall. 

This discovery quickened his pulse. 
Was he about to make an important 
discovery? The answer was not far 
to seek. As he came over a huge pile 
of snow and ice-dehris, he found him¬ 
self staring open-mouthed at the roof 
of a long, narrow, shed-like structure. 

With a shout and a spring he was 
away to explore it. But even as he 
came near to it, he paused. It seemed 
almost impossible that there should be 
an uninhabited building as substantial 
as this one on this lost continent. Were 
there, after all, human beings, wild 



138 


ICE BOUND 


savages perhaps, or Orientals living 
here? 

Shaking these strange thoughts from 
him, he moved forward to round a cor¬ 
ner and to discover a door, closed and 
fastened with a padlock. 

The lock was of brass. It bore on its 
face strange figures of dragons and un- 
namable creatures. 

“Oriental,” he breathed, and once 
more, for an instant, the dread was 
upon him. 

But the bar and staple were of iron 
and were all but rusted off. This dis¬ 
pelled his fears. Two stout kicks 
brought the lock jangling down. The 
next instant the door was pushed in 



ICE BOUND 


139 


and he fell sprawling into the room; 
the snow had been packed some two 
feet high against the base of the door. 

He found himself in a narrow hall¬ 
way. At the end of this hallway was a 
second door. Having opened this he 
found himself in a long, rather narrow 
room lighted by four small, heavily- 
glassed windows. As his eyes became 
accustomed to the light he saw in the 
far end of the room a number of sacks 
filled with some commodity. 

“Flour,” he murmured. “Not much 
use to us.” 

He examined the boards of which the 
house was built. 

“Poor stuff. No good for repairing 
our ship’s hull.” 



140 


ICE BOUND 


With a leisurely stride he walked to 
where the sacks were piled. 

“Look dry enough,” he muttered. 
“Good roof.” 

He touched a sack. “Dusty.” 

He examined the tips of his fingers. 
“That’s queer. Sort of gritty.” 

Striking a sack with his axe he cut 
a gash in it. Into this he dug his fin¬ 
gers, then examined the material that 
came out with them. 

“Cement!” he ejaculated. “That’s 
queer. Some exploring expedition. 
Used it for bases for their instruments; 
things for measuring tides, winds and 
electrical disturbances and for watch¬ 
ing the stars. Had some left. Can’t 
see’s it is going to do us much good, 



ICE BOUND 


141 


unless—■” he scratched his head. “By 
George, I believe we could!’’ There was 
a joyous note in his voice which had 
not been there for months. 

Turning quickly, he rushed out of 
the building, closed both doors and was 
oft for his own cabin as fast as his 

bruise-stiffened legs could carry him. 
* * * 

When Rodger received no answer 
to his repeated calls down into the 
crevice into which he was sure Don 
had fallen, he tried lighting matches 
and allowing them to drop into the 
dark depths, but each one flared out 
before it had dropped ten feet. He 
tore his cotton handkerchief into strips 
and, lighting these, one by one, dropped 



142 


ICE BOUND 


them after the matches. This brought 
better results, but with even these he 
was not able to see clearly to a depth 
of over thirty feet. 

At last, giving up in despair, he hur¬ 
ried away to find Ole. He met him 
coming up the slope. Ole had found 
the spot where the Outlaw had made 
his last fight with a huge sea-leopard. 
The dog had attacked and killed the 
sea-leopard’s cub and had been engaged 
in devouring it when the irate mother 
had come up through her hole in the 
ice and had attacked him. Angered 
by her onslaught, he had doubtless re¬ 
turned the attack and her sharp teeth 
had done the rest. 

Ole shared Rodger’s consternation 



ICE BOUND 


143 


over the apparent ill fate of their com¬ 
rade. 

“We must hurry to the cabin for 
ropes and a lantern,” Rodger said, start¬ 
ing off on a run. “He may be uncon¬ 
scious, not dead. Perhaps we can save 
him yet.” Ole joined him in the race 
to the cabin. 

Quite out of breath, they at last 
rounded a point which gave them a 
view of their cabin. 

Suddenly Rodger stopped short. “A 
light,” he exclaimed. “We didn’t leave 
a light.” 

“No, we didn’t,” said Ole decidedly. 
“I remember blowing it out myself.” 

“Then what—” 

Por a moment they stood there un- 



144 


ICE BOUND 


decided. No man, or boy either, ever 
gets so far from the accustomed haunts 
of men but that he is constantly ex¬ 
pecting to see some strange human be¬ 
ing round a point and come into his 
view. To these boys, a stranger seemed 
the only solution to the present prob¬ 
lem. Impossible as it seemed, it ap¬ 
peared far more probable than that Don 
had escaped from his icy tomb and, un¬ 
assisted, had made his way to the cabin. 

Without another word, they began 
making their way toward the cabin. 
The double window on the south was 
never frosted over. To this they made 
their way, the last few steps on tip-toe. 
Rodger was the first to look within. 
Instantly there escaped from his lips 



ICE BOUND 


145 


a whoop of joy. Then Ole looked only 
to join him in the shout. Don, stripped 
to the skin, hovering near the heating 
drum, was rubbing liniment into his 
many bruises. 

“Shut that door. Want a fellow to 
freeze ?” he exclaimed as they burst into 
the cabin. 

“But—but—how—how.” 

“Shut that door, I tell you!” 

The door closed, Don turned and 
grinned at them. “How’d I get out? 
That’s a long story. But I’ve got a 
better one than that, a whole lot better 
than that; it’s the story of how we’ll 
leave this blamed old continent in the 
spring.” 


‘You didn’t—” 



146 


ICE BOUND 


“Yes, I did. I found the explorer’s 
camp.” 

“And was there a boat?” Ole ques¬ 
tioned eagerly. 

“Not any boat, far as I could see.” 

Ole’s face lost its eager smile. “Then 
how—” 

“That’s a long story, too,” smiled Don, 
drawing on his trousers, “at least it will 
be before we get through—it’ll mean a 
lot of hard work, but we’ll make it all 
right. We’ll sail with the first open 
water.” 

With no thought of supper, the two 
boys listened eagerly to Don’s story of 
the discovery and his plans for the 
future. 

“This is the way we’ll do it,” he ex- 



ICE BOUND 


147 


plained, spreading paper on the table 
and sketching roughly with a pencil. 

“Yes, and there’s the ten pieces of 
hickory in our supplies and the hun¬ 
dred feet of steel rod,” supplemented 
Ole. “That’ll make bolts and rivets. 
Whoop-ee!” He leaped in air to dance 
a jig. “But say.” he sat down sud¬ 
denly, “how about—” , 

And so the discussion went on for 
two hours. 

At last Don rose and stretched him¬ 
self. 

“Say!” he exclaimed, “when did you 
fellows eat last?” 

“I—I can’t quite remember,” ad¬ 
mitted Rodger. 

“Then don’t you suppose it’s time we 



148 


ICE BOUND 


indulged in that little bad habit once 
more?” laughed Don, shoving the coffee 
pot over the fire and reaching out a 
friendly hand to drag Ole, the chief 
cook, up on his feet. 






CHAPTER VII 

In the Crater of Erebus 

Winter in the Antarctic is long, nine 
months of snow and ice with never a 
thaw. As long as there was work to 
be done toward assuring a return to 
civilization in the spring, the boys la¬ 
bored on early and late. But the win¬ 
ter was not half gone when they found 
themselves with nothing to do but to 
wait, and, for three husky boys, wait- 


149 


150 


ICE BOUND 


ing was just the hardest part of any 
undertaking. 

“Ole!” said Rodger, on one of these 
long days of waiting, “there’s a grand 
old volcano way back there somewhere; 
I’ve seen the steam rising from it often. 
How’d you like to try to make its 
summit? 

“Fine! Great idea!” exclaimed Ole 
enthusiastically. “Might find some 
gold up that way, too.” Ole had not 
forgotten that they had hoped to make 
a search for gold on the Antarctic 
islands. He meant to make a try for 
Pendulum Cove, once they were safely 
away from the continent. But, now, 
why not a search for it right here?” 



ICE BOUND 


151 


“That’s right, we might,” Dodger 
agreed. 

“We’ll have to make our prepara¬ 
tions rather carefully,” he said, after 
a moment’s thought. Can’t count on 
finding any food on the way, and it’s 
rather a long trip. Guess we better go 
about it by degrees. Drag some sled¬ 
loads of food far as we can one day; 
then establish a cache. Then we’ll go 
back for more. In this way we’ll have 
a line of food stations to fall back on. 
There’s not a creature on all the hills 
to disturb our food; not since the Out¬ 
law’s dead.” 

Seven days of hard labor saw suffi¬ 
cient caches established to make them 



152 


ICE BOUND 


feel sure of a safe journey. There fol¬ 
lowed a howling blizzard which came 
sweeping down from the south and, 
for the time being, all journeys were 
postponed. They were not afraid of 
having their caches completely buried 
in snow as they had marked each one 
with a bit of red cloth tacked to a pole. 

At last the storm passed and the air 
cleared. That morning they were 
away. Only Don was left to guard 
camp. 

They covered a broad stretch of 
tundra and low-lying hills that day 
but night saw them still far from the 
mountain. Three days of hard travel 
only sufficed to bring them to the goal. 
It was with anxious heart that Rodger 



ICE BOUND 


153 


found himself at last looking down into 
the steaming bowl that formed the 
crest of the volcano. 

“We must hurry on back,” he was 
telling himself. “Only one day’s pro¬ 
visions and five days of travel. How 
foolish we have been.” 

In that instant a new and terrible 
peril seized his companion and sent 
him gliding down to what appeared to 
be certain death. He had stepped on 
a thinly crusted hole where steam had 
been arising. The next instant he was 
gone. 

“Ole! Ole!” Rodger cried wildly, 
leaning forward to peer down into 
the depths into which his companion 
had fallen. 



154 


ICE BOUND 


The great bowl from which vapor and 
steam were constantly rising, allowed 
but a scant view of its vastness. Per¬ 
haps this vast crater was the greatest 
in the known world. Certainly it meas¬ 
ured a half mile from edge to edge, and 
the distance into its fiery, steam-laden 
depths was nine hundred feet. Con¬ 
stantly from these depths there came 
a thunderous, bubbling sound, as of a 
gigantic caldron about to boil over. It 
was this that would render a shout by 
the strongest voice inaudible at a hun¬ 
dred feet distance. And yet the boy 
had hoped—he had hoped, what had he 
hoped? What dared he to hope? Could 
one return from the dead? Then, in¬ 
deed, one might return from that un- 



ICE BOUND 


155 


known, unexplored chasm which one 
might enter only by an accidental slip 
into its unmeasured depths. Such a 
slide as this had plunged his friend into 
—into—who knew what? 

Presently Rodger rose and began 
pacing back and forth along the edge. 
He could do nothing; that was the 
thought that drove him to distraction. 
If he had a rope he might dangle it 
down into the vapory depths in a vain 
hope that Ole might be lodged down 
there somewhere in the hidden walls, 
and might seize it and be drawn to 
safety. But he had no rope. The 
nearest rope was a day’s journey from 
that spot, and it was but a light, short 
with which they had tied their 


rope 



156 


ICE BOUND 


packs on making the ascent of the 
mountain. It would be useless. He 
could do nothing, and yet how could 
he leave the spot where he had last 
seen the white, frightened face of his 
pal, as he plunged into those depths 
into which he now so vainly peered? 

A good friend Ole had been, and this 
last journey with all its perils had 
welded their lives together in an al¬ 
most inseparable bond. 

It had been a perilous climb to the 
top. Once a blizzard had threatened 
to sweep them from the glistening 
glacier’s surface into some unknown 
abyss beyond. Over tottering glacier 
surfaces, through cold such as neither 
had known before, they had made their 



ICE BOUND 


157 


way till, at last, they had stood at the 
very rim of this, the most wonderful 
and mysterious of nature’s phenomena, 
a volcano covered forever with a canopy 
of ice and snow. 

And they had stood there in awe¬ 
struck wonder at it all. Far below 
them, stretching away and away, lay 
the great unknown Antarctic Conti¬ 
nent. A continent! Not an island 
merely, but a great, vast continent un¬ 
known! One man with his few fol¬ 
lowers had made his way to the center 
of it and had planted a flag there in the 
name of his native land, but even he 
was caught in the iron grip of this 
frozen land and was able to tell his 
story only through the written record 



158 


ICE BOUND 


which he left behind. The Antarctic 
Continent! How their hearts had 
thrilled at thought of it! 

And then they had looked down into 
those hidden depths from which came 
the thundering sound of mighty boil¬ 
ing fires, and from whose huge interior 
gave on many a night the reflection of 
vast hidden fires. 

They had looked and marveled, and 
then Ole, stepping too near, had slipped. 
There had been a cry and he was gone. 
Gone! That was all. No answer came 
to the call of the boy on the rim of 
the abyss, and now he sat there deso¬ 
late and alone. How could he ever re¬ 
turn and attempt to tell of the fate of 
his comrade? 



ICE BOUND 


159 


An ri Ole, having shot downward an 
almost perpendicular wall of ice and 
wind-hardened snow, at last arrived 
at a more gradual slope and at the same 
time realized that the snow over which 
he was passing had been softened by 
a recent steam eruption of the volcano. 
Desperately, as a last hope, he dug his 
heels into the snow while he clung to 
it till his hands were raw and bleed¬ 
ing. But slowly, surely, his speed slack¬ 
ened, and as it did so the snow began to 
collect before him in the form of a 
small avalanche. Then, for a moment 
this young avalanche paused. Instantly 
the boy dug his heels into the yielding 
snow and scrambled with all speed to 
the right of the snow, which seemed 



160 


ICE BO U N D 


trembling over an abyss. With heart 
almost still, he heard, a moment later, 
the thunder of the avalanche he had 
started as it went crashing into space 
below. 

Instantly his mind was at work. He 
now had a chance for his life—a very 
slim chance, but a chance nevertheless. 
How soon would the volcano go through 
another eruption and emit fumes that 
would kill any unfortunate creature 
which might find itself within its cal¬ 
dron? This he could not tell. How 
was he to make his way up that al¬ 
most perpendicular hundred feet, down 
which he had shot rather than slid? 
This he could not tell. But this one 
thing he could do. He could make his 



ICE BOUND 


161 


way up over the more gradual slope 
and the softer snow to where the steep 
ascent began, and this he would do at 
once. 

Fortunately his ice-axe remained in 
his belt. This he unslung, and where 
the snow seemed dangerously hard- 
packed, he cut steps for his feet. He 
was soon at the limit of this undertak¬ 
ing, for there lay before him a wall 
so perpendicular that no steeplejack, 
however clever, could hope to scale it. 

Seeing this, he began making his way 
cautiously around the inside of the 
bowl, hoping against hope that he 
might find a more gradual slope to the 
summit. What he found instead was 
a more precipitous ascent which termi- 



162 


ICE BOUND 


nated at last in a vast shelf. This 
proved to be an ice cavern cut some 
fifty feet into the side of the wall and 
from which hung giant icicles which 
might do credit to the tales of Gulliver. 

Into this cavern, creeping between 
great inverted icicles, he went. He be¬ 
came conscious of a phenomenon which 
puzzled him. The fumes of sulphur, 
which made the air almost unbearable 
everywhere within the crater, were not 
traveling up to the roof of the cavern 
and then outward, but were constantly 
going to the back of the cavern. How 
were they escaping? Suddenly the 
boy’s heart thrilled with hope and he 
increased his pace to such an extent 
that there was danger that he be pitched 



ICE BOUND 


163 


headlong among the inverted icicles. 
At last he was at the very back of the 
cavern. Here he found holes going up 
through the ice above like flues to an 
engine. There were numbers of them, 
making the upper ice seem a mere 
honeycomb. The steam from the crater 
when the volcano was in eruption had 
undoubtedly gradually melted the ice 
through and established a passage to 
the open air above. He remembered 
to have seen holes of this kind on the 
surface at places from which sulphur 
fumes were arising. 

But these holes were all small; none 
of them larger than six inches in diam¬ 
eter. They could be of no service to 
the boy in his endeavor to escape. But 



164 


ICE BOUND 


suddenly he remembered to have seen 
one opening at the surface that was at 
least two feet in diameter. He made 
a mental calculation of the distance 
they had traveled over the rim before 
his fall and the distance he had trav¬ 
eled around the inside of the bowl since, 
and concluded that the openings they 
had seen at the top were the outlets to 
this very cavern. 

“If only I can find that one opening! 
If only I can!” he murmured, and in 
his tone there was hope mingled with 
deep despair. 

Madly he raced in and out among 
the icicles, ever peering above him, till 
at last with a cry of joy, he saw an 
opening larger than the rest, much 



ICE BOUND 


165 


larger! Indeed, it was some four feet 
in diameter. His heart sank. How 
could he make his way through such 
an opening? If it were a foot less in 
diameter he might hope to use his back, 
his knees and his shoulders to force his 
way upward over the slippery surface, 
but four feet, he could never do that! 
But it was his only hope. He must 
try. 

Quickly cutting steps in the glazed 
ice under the opening, he was at last 
beneath it. The fumes hid everything 
above. Indeed, here they were almost 
stifling. His eyes smarted and his 
throat burned. Yet he was determined. 
Wetting his handkerchief in some 
melted snow, he tied it over his face, 



166 


ICE BOUND 


then thrust his shoulders into the open¬ 
ing. 

To his delight, he found that the en¬ 
trance grew almost instantly smaller, 
and he had cut but a few notches for 
his feet before he was able to main¬ 
tain his position by simply bracing him¬ 
self against the walls. Two problems 
now faced him. Was the hole truly the 
one with the two-foot opening at the 
top? And would he be able to endure 
the fumes which must gather about him 
as he ascended? How terrible it would 
be to find himself trapped within a few 
feet of the open air, or to feel himself 
gradually give way under the stifling 
of the fumes, and to tumble at last to 



ICE BOUND 


167 


the bottom like a poisoned rat. It was 
his last chance. Setting his teeth tight 
and squaring his muscles for the ordeal, 
he began wriggling himself upward. 

Rodger had remained seated and mo¬ 
tionless at the rim of the volcano. He 
could do nothing but wait and hope, 
and this he did, though hope seemed 
beyond reason. And now as he sat 
there, the rumbling sound of boiling 
liquid became louder. It grew and 
grew, as does the sound of a night ex¬ 
press approaching from a distance. 
Then there spread over the thickening 
and rising fumes and steam a pale yel¬ 
low hue which gradually deepened into 
an orange and at last to a fiery red. 



168 


ICE BOUND 


The crater of vapors seemed at last a 
great caldron filled almost to the brim 
with red and molten liquid. 

The boy rose stiffly. He realized that 
now no creature in these depths could 
live. He realized also that not long 
would it be safe to remain on the rim 
of the volcano. Already the air was 
filled with sulphur fumes. He turned 
slowly to retrace his steps down the 
mountain, and as he turned found him¬ 
self facing his chum. His clothes were 
torn, his face yellow with sulphur 
fumes, and haggard from the strain, 
but there he stood and very much 
alive at that. 

Without a word, they turned to go 
plunging down the steep mountain- 



ICE BOUND 


169 


side before the ever-advancing fumes. 
Slipping, sliding, racing, pausing to 
get their bearings, then plunging on 
again, they finally reached their camp¬ 
ing-place in only a fraction of the time 
consumed in making the ascent. 

There, by the light of the reflection 
which hung over the volcano, they 
cooked an appetizing meal of seal meat 
and tea, after which they crept into 
their sleeping-bags to rest, each men¬ 
tally resolving that this should be his 
last adventure, a resolve which was 
destined to be dissipated by the glad 
rays of the morning sun. 



CHAPTER VIII 

Imperiled by Antarctic Sea Gulls 

The following day found new trou¬ 
ble awaiting them. They were at the 
first cache of food when Rodger cast an 
uneasy glance toward the sky. Two 
great, ivory gulls were soaring aloft, 
flapping their way lazily southward. 

“They fly as if they had but lately 
fed,” he said to Ole. The wrinkles in 
his brow deepened as he spoke. The 


170 


ICE BOUND 


171 


two gulls, slowly descending, alighted 
at last on the beacon the boys had just 
passed. 

Ole knew what question was in his 
companion’s mind. He, too, had been 
troubled at sight of the sea gulls. Had 
they been at the food-depots which lay 
before them on the trail? These gulls 
were prodigious eaters. Were there 
other gulls? Would the boys find the 
food-depots destroyed by these birds? 
The meat and pemmican had been piled 
loosely and unprotected on the cache of 
snow cakes. Who would dream that 
these birds traveled so far inland? 
There could be nothing for them to 
seek here. Were they crossing the 
great Antarctic Continent? This prob- 



172 


ICE BOUND 


lem, though an interesting one to the 
scientist or the naturalist, was of little 
interest to the boys. The fact of the 
matter was that the gulls were here, 
here a hundred and fifty miles from 
the shore of the great lost continent, 
and the food-depot which had been 
placed there for their return journey 
seemed in danger of destruction. And 
if it was destroyed? The two boys 
looked at one another for a moment in 
silence, then without a word, moved 
slowly forward over the surface of the 
glacier, which was now blue, glaring 
ice, and now wind-swept, corrugated 
stretches of snow. 

“We’ll know in a few hours,” said 
Ole at last. 



ICE BOUND 


173 


“Yes, we’ll know,” said his com¬ 
panion quietly. Then they pushed on 
in silence. 

“Look,” Rodger cried in dismay. 

“A hundred of them!” Ole exclaimed, 
as he glanced before him. They had 
made their way over the trail to the 
next depot and now as they neared 
it, there had risen from above the place 
a hundred sea gulls, squawking and 
screaming as they scattered before 
their advance. 

“If we only had a gun,” groaned Ole, 
“we’d make them pay dearly for this. 
They are not very good eating, but 
they’re a lot better than nothing. 

They found matters quite as bad as 
they had feared. The entire supply of 



174 


ICE BOUND 


food had been devoured by the birds, 
and some even hovered above them like 
great vultures, as if expecting the boys 
to die before their eyes and furnish 
them some further repast. 

“Who would have thought of the 
sea gulls?” groaned Rodger. “There’s 
not another part of the world in which 
the caches unprotected on the snow 
would be safe from animals, but there’s 
not a land animal on this whole great 
continent, not so much as a mouse. And 
here come the gulls and rob us just as 
we are making the last laps of the 
journey. 

* * * 

Ole struggled forward, starving, half 
asleep, leading the way for his com- 



ICE BOUND 


175 


panion, who fell again and again, only 
to be urged up and on again. Many 
hours had passed since they had discov¬ 
ered the last cache robbed. They had 
lost their way. They were starving. 
No food and yet they were but fifty 
miles from food and shelter. Could 
they make it? The question kept re¬ 
volving itself through Ole’s mind. But 
now he heard Rodger calling hoarsely. 

“Ole,” he shouted hoarsely. “I be¬ 
lieve I see something off to the right 
of us!” 

Ole paid little attention. What could 
there be in all this empty land that 
would be of assistance to them? The 
fog had lifted from the glacier and 
there might, indeed, be some barren 



176 


ICE BOUND 


rocks showing in the distance, but one 
could not live on rocks. 

“It looks like something sticking up 
out of the snow,” said Rodger. “I’m 
going over to see.” 

“All right,” said Ole dreamily, 
“don’t go too far and don’t stay too 
long.” 

Rodger had not gone far toward the 
strange object before he discovered it 
to be a part of a broken ski sticking up 
out of the snow. His heart bounded 
with hope. Other men beside them¬ 
selves had been on this glacier. This 
cheered him. The place did not seem 
so lonely now. As he approached the 
spot he was sure he saw a mound half- 
buried in the snow. And as he came 



ICE BOUND 


177 


near to it he could hardly breathe for 
his heart’s thumping. He felt sure that 
here was a cache of food in boxes. If 
only it were not spoiled with age! 

Instantly he was fumbling about in 
the snow. At last he dragged a box 
from its hiding and ripped it open with 
his bare hand. It was a box of malted 
milk in cans. It was sure to be fresh. 
With a great shout he began to call for 
his partner. 

Ole heard his shout at first in a 
dream. He had fallen quite asleep. 
But at last he arose and stumbled to¬ 
ward his companion. 

“Malted milk and chocolate and pem- 
mican in tins, and other tinned meats; 
enough for us now, and for the journey 



178 


ICE BOUND 


home,” sighed Ole, as he broke the last 
box open. “Who could have left it 
here?” 

Rodger thought for a moment. He 
had read every book of Antarctic ex¬ 
ploration in the library of their city. 

“Amundson,” he said at last. “The 
cache is years old. But I’m mighty 
glad it’s here.” 

The boys were soon feasting, and 
after that they lay down to sleep. 

The remainder of the journey was 
made with ease and comfort. They 
found things as they had left them at 
the camp. There was no sign of the 
ocean’s ice breaking up. This greatly 
disappointed them. 

As Ole stood alone by the beach that 



# # 



As He Broke the Last Box Open 

179 










ICE BOUND 


181 


night and looked away at the tumbled 
mass of iee piles, he wondered for the 
hundredth time, whether they were to 
be compelled to live on this desolate 
continent for another year. Such a 
catastrophy seemed almost unthink¬ 
able. 

Five months later Rodger sat gaz¬ 
ing away at the distant mountains, 
which were being painted a rosy tint 
by the long, parallel rays of the mid¬ 
night sun. 

Rodger was at peace with the world 
and himself. He had experienced a 
wonderful winter; such a one as he did 
not hope soon again to know. A born 
explorer, he had ransacked his little 
corner of this strange continent to his 



182 


ICE BOUND 


heart’s content. Every empty sack and 
box at his command was filled with 
specimens. Green and pink diatoms, 
skins and skeletons of seal, sea-leop¬ 
ards, penguins and many types of birds, 
as well as a score of strange species of 
fishes had been stowed away to later 
enrich some zoological collection, while 
his collection of minerals included some 
really surprising discoveries. A yellow 
metal, having all the properties of gold, 
gleamed from a specimen broken from 
a granite cliff, and two small pebbles 
gave off the phosphorescent-like gleam 
which is the property of diamonds 
shown in the dark. 

Little wonder, then, that he was 
pleased at the winter’s work which had 



ICE BOUND 


183 


been so strangely thrust upon him. 

And yet, he was glad for another 
thing; glad they were going home. 
Home, the very word brought up a 
thousand pleasant recollections; some 
disturbing ones, too. Many, many times 
he had wondered how the whaling 
schooner had been able to pass the win¬ 
ter without the supplies which had so 
unfortunately gone astray—yet, he 
longed to be away. 

Spring was in the air. Hundreds of 
penguins who had gone swimming and 
flopping their way north in the autumn 
were coming back, magalestrides, and 
snowy petrel, came in great numbers 
too. There was a break in the solid 
shore ice. He was seated at the edge of 



184 


ICE BOUND 


this pool of black water now and watch¬ 
ing the little Antarctic prawns, snap¬ 
ping their way like small crawfish 
through the water. All this spoke of 
the coming of spring; movement, hustle, 
bustle, noise, action. One longed to 
be away. 

And they were going; he felt sure of 
that. The schooner had been assem¬ 
bled; that is, the part that had been 
left was. The engine was in place, the 
cabins, the wheel, the rudder, every¬ 
thing except the prow. There a great, 
dark hole yawned. The hull stood on a 
solid cake of ice, propped to right and 
left, and seeming like a plow without 
a plowshare. 

Outside the new cabin on the beach, 



ICE BOUND 


185 


was a tent, made of sails. They had been 
living in this tent for a week. Inside 
the cabin were strange doings. The 
gasoline stove with its huge heating 
drum had been shoved into one corner 
and kept going day and night. Ten seal 
oil lamps, improvised out of pieces of 
granite, ranged along the wall, had 
been kept burning too. In the center 
of the room and almost filling it, and 
towering to the ceiling was a strange 
triangular affair built of rough boards. 
In spite of the heat produced by the 
stove and seal oil lamps, the air was as 
humid within as the inside of a laun¬ 
dry. The windows thickly crusted with 
frost, admitted an uncertain glow of 
light. 



186 


ICE BOUND 


Ever now and again Don would 
burst into the room, quickly slam the 
door to, examine the stove and the 
lamps, perhaps add a cup of oil here 
or drag up the rag wick there, thump 
the side of the strange bulk in the cen¬ 
ter of the room, then mutter as he 
turned toward the door: 

“If it’s right! If it only is!” 

* * * 

As he sat by the side of the dark pool 
of water, Rodger’s attention was at¬ 
tracted by a great emperor penguin 
who had come coasting down the slop¬ 
ing hillside and had, quite unexpect¬ 
edly, glided off the bank into the 
water. Not that the penguin does not 
find himself quite at home in the water; 



ICE BOUND 


187 


lie does, but in this case the pool was 
lined all round with an abrupt wall of 
ice which no penguin unassisted could 
scale. 

Of all the creatures of the Antarctic, 
Rodger had found none half so fasci¬ 
nating as the penguin. His droll, man¬ 
nish ways, as he struts about on the ice, 
his fearless friendliness, his amusing 
antics give him a real personality which 
no other creature of any land possesses. 

Although the great flock of them had 
migrated to warmer waters in autumn, 
five had elected to stay about the camp. 
Welcome enough they had been and 
well they had been fed. Rodger called 
them the “Five Gray Friars.” He 
came to know them one from the other 



Ifc8 


ICE BOUND 


by the peculiar markings. He noted 
now that this fellow who was making 
frantic efforts to escape from the pool 
was one of the five. More than this, he 
noted that the bird was in great peril. 
Deep in the bottom of that transparent 
pool he detected the stealthy movement 
of a gray mass; then the flash of white 
teeth. 

“Sea leopard,” he whispered, mov¬ 
ing over to the side on which the pen¬ 
guin was struggling to escape. “Old 
Gray Friar,” he whispered, addressing 
his friend, “if you let that fellow get a 
nip at you, you’re a gonner—” 

Just as the boy put out a hand to 
assist him, the penguin disappeared. 



ICE BOUND 


189 


“Gone,” he muttered. “Too late! 
He got him.” 

He was genuinely sorry. The Five 
Gray Friars had been great play fel¬ 
lows. With them he had coasted down 
hill; with them skated and with them 
had gone on long excursions. Once he 
had attempted to entertain them with 
martial music played on a phonograph. 
They had voted the show a failure and 
had done their best to wreck the instru¬ 
ment by beating it with the flipper. 

That the sea leopard had captured 
the penguin, he did not once doubt, for 
the sea-leopard, a species of very large 
seal, is a cannibal of the first order. 
Living on warm-blooded meat, he 



190 


ICE BOUND 


makes life hazardous for penguin, 
young sea-birds and even for seals of 
a smaller species. But suddenly he ex¬ 
claimed, “There he is. He didn’t get 
him!” 

The penguin was now on the oppo¬ 
site side of the pool. Racing to his aid, 
Rodger bent over to give him a hand 
up, when suddenly there came a great 
rolling wave of the sea. Lifting the 
cake of ice on which the boy rested, it 
pitched him headforemost into the sea. 
He came up laughing, for he was a 
masterful swimmer and did not in the 
least fear the sea-leopard. 

Having assisted the Gray Friar to 
mount a swaying cake of ice and hav- 




Played on a Phonograph 

191 




























ICE BOUND 


193 


ing experienced again the thrill that 
comes from the feel of water against 
one’s chest, he decided to stay in for a 
ten-minute swim. 

Don, who had witnessed this little 
panorama from the slope above, sat 
down to watch and admire the grace¬ 
ful antics of his pal. 

Suddenly his face turned deathly 
white. 

“Rod! Rod!” he exclaimed. “Look 
out! Look out! A thrasher! A killer! 
A killer whale!” 

Rodger, casting one glance down¬ 
ward into the depths, felt himself petri¬ 
fied with fear. Beneath him, turned 
half on his side, his double row of white 



194 


ICE BOUND 


teeth gleaming hideously, was one of 
those beasts of South Polar seas which 
every being fears—a killer whale. The 
instant he regained his senses, Rodger 
dove, dove deep and strong. To go 
beneath the “killer” was his only 
chance. 

In the meantime Don on shore had 
grasped a heavy whaling gun which lay 
against a boulder. It had been with the 
whaling schooner supplies and Rodger, 
that very morning, had charged it with 
a small bomb in the faint hope that he 
might get the skeleton of a “killer’s” 
head for his collection. 

With straining eyes Don watched the 
pool. The crystal clearness of the 



ICE BOUND 


195 


water gave him ample opportunity to 
observe every move of both boy and 
whale. For the moment, a shot was 
not to be thought of; it would too 
greatly imperil his comrade. 









CHAPTER IX 

Piloted by An Iceberg 

The pool into which Rodger had 
fallen was long and narrow. Scarcely 
ten yards wide at any point, it stretched 
for a distance of some three hundred 
yards down the bay. 

Having dived under the huge body of 
the whale, he swam for a short dis¬ 
tance beneath the surface of the water 
to come up some ten yards from the 


196 


ICE BOUND 


197 


point where he had left it. Without 
pausing for a glance behind him, he 
began at once the Australian crawl, 
which carried him swiftly toward the 
far end of the pool. A muffled roar 
told him that Don had risked a shot. 
Whether the bomb had found its mark 
he could not tell, nor did he dare pause 
for a glance back. 

To his consternation, he discovered, 
on nearing the far end of the pool that 
the wall of ice was much higher on this 
end than on the other. 

“Three feet, and straight up,” he 
groaned. “I—I’m afraid—but I must 
attempt it.” 

As he came within two yards of the 
ice-wall, he executed a flying-fish like 



198 


ICE BOUND 


motion which lifted him quite out of 
the water and flung him against the 
ice. Instantly his hands gripped the 
slippery edge and clung there. With 
knees doubled under, feet treading 
water, every muscle straining, he at¬ 
tempted to throw himself upon the 
smooth upper surface of the ice. 

Just as he realized that he must fail, 
he glanced back. For a second, wild 
desperation controlled him. The whale 
was all but upon him. And now he was 
calm again. Calling every muscle into 
play, he executed a skillful backward 
flip-flop, which threw him by the side 
of the whale and, for the moment, out 
of reach of his savage jaws. 

With a strangely terrifying sucking 



ICE BOUND 


199 


sound, the great creature plunged head 
foremost into the water. So great was 
the draw of the whirlpool created by 
his downward swoop, that the boy was 
all but drawn beneath the surface. 

After a brief battle with the seeth¬ 
ing water, Rodger set out bravely for 
the other end of the pool. His strength 
was waning; he realized this with a 
sort of shudder. This must be his last 
race with death. He thought of Don 
and the whale gun! There were other 
charges for the gun beneath a flat rock 
nearby where the gun had stood. Did 
Don know this? Would he load the 
gun and fire again? And, if he did, 
would he have better success than on 



200 


ICE BOUND 


the first trial? These were the ques¬ 
tions which sped through his mind as 
first his right hand, then his left, shot 
far out above the water as if he were 
reaching for a firmer grip on life. 

Don did know about the other 
charges. He had reloaded the whale- 
gun. He was now hovering on the very 
edge of the pool, waiting the prime op¬ 
portunity for a sure shot. He realized 
that Rodger’s strength was waning, 
that this shot must reach its mark if 
his good pal were to accompany him 
back to their home. And what would 
the journey mean without him? His 
eyes blurred at the very thought. 

But now they were clear again. The 



ICE BOUND 


201 


critical instant had arrived. Rodger 
was all but at the end of the pool; the 
whale a few laps behind. 

Now the whale appeared to pause, 
like a tiger before a spring. With a 
steady eye Don took aim. There came 
a loud report; it was followed a second 
later by a muffled roar. Instantly the 
water was boiling, red with blood. The 
shot had reached its mark. 

A moment later Don was hurrying 
his companion away to the tent for 
dry clothing. 

“Whew—that—that was a—close— 
close one,” Rodger puffed. 

“I say so,” answered Don. 

“But say!” Rodger exclaimed, “you 
keep a watch on that pool. See if he 



202 


ICE BOUND 


floats to the top. Get a harpoon and 
tie him to the ice if he does. I—I want 
that head of his for my collection.” 
Then he tore away at his water-soaked 
garments. “That was a corking shot 
of yours, that last one. A real pippin, 
I’d say!” 

“It—it had to be,” mumbled Don. 
There was a suspicious huskiness in his 
voice. “I’ll just go down and see if 
he’s come to the top.” 

“All right. Here’s hoping.” 

A few moments later, as Rodger was 
drawing on his boots, he heard a joy¬ 
ous shout from off the ice that told him 
plainer than words that the wonderful 
head of the “killer” was to be added to 
his collection. 



ICE BOUND 


203 


Two days later Don burst into the 
tent with the exclamation: 

“Moisture’s gone from the cabin; 
frost has cleared from the windows!” 

“Which means,” smiled Rodger, “that 
the great moment has arrived; that the 
momentous question is about to be an¬ 
swered.” 

“We’ll have to tear the whole side 
out of the cabin,” said Ole, seizing an 
axe. “Can’t get ’er out any other way.” 

There was soon to be heard a ripping 
and tearing of boards at the cabin built 
of the explorer’s lumber. In a very 
short time the entire side which faced 
the sea had been torn away. 

There was still work to do. Again 
there came the screech of nails, the 



204 


ICE BOUND 


crash of boards. This time it was the 
mysterious structure erected within the 
cabin that was coming down. As the 
work progressed, there came more and 
more into view a strange-looking affair, 
built entirely of cement. It was tri¬ 
angular in shape, and appearing to be 
solid, might be judged to be of consid¬ 
erable weight. 

As the last board was ripped away, 
Don seized a hammer and tapped it 
lightly here and there. 

“Seems 0. K.,” he muttered. 

He scanned it up and down. “No 
seams, either. Perfect job, I’d say. 
Turn her about to the light.” 

The combined strength of the trio 
was needed to swing the affair to a posi- 



ICE BOUND 


205 


tion where it rested with the sharp 
edge toward the light. 

In this position it very much resem¬ 
bled the prow of a ship. And such, in¬ 
deed, it was intended to be. They had 
cast it to replace the prow of their 
schooner. Don had conceived the idea 
on that day when he first discovered 
the cement. When his comrades had 
been skeptical he had pointed out to 
them the fact that during the war the 
entire hulks of ships had been made of 
cement and that these very ships had 
helped win the war. 

“We can’t do any worse than fail,” 
he had urged. 

So they had gone about it. No light 
task was this, freighting hundreds of 



206 


ICE BOUND 


pounds of cement and great piles of 
lumber over the rough and uncertain 
trail which lay between them and the 
explorer’s cabin. At times they had 
been overtaken by blizzards which came 
sweeping down from the south. Frozen 
noses, ears and fingers resulted. But 
they had persisted. 

The problem of setting the cement 
once it was mixed and poured into the 
form had been a difficult one. Well 
they knew that it would not set unless 
it was kept at a temperature well above 
freezing and in a dry place. The build¬ 
ing of the form within the cabin and 
keeping of the stove and seal-oil lamps 
had solved this problem. 

And now there remained but to drag 



ICE BOUND 


207 


this strange fake-prow up to their 
schooner, to prop it into position, then 
to bolt and stay it into place with bolts 
which Ole had laboriously forged and 
with hickory timbers taken from their 
supply. 

They went at this task with a will 
and, ten days later, only a skilled ship¬ 
builder could have guessed that the 
Augusta C had a cement prow. Two 
coats of water-proof paint had all but 
obliterated the line of repair. 

“And now,” breathed Don, giving a 
turn to the capstan which was attached 
to a distant ice-pan, “Off she comes.” 

Slowly, gracefully, the craft followed 
the groove which they had cut for her 
in the ice, and, as she glided forward, 



208 


ICE BOUND 


seemed to test the water as some child 
might who was wading in the edge of* 
a pool. 

“She stirs, she moves, 

She seems to feel 

A thrill of life 

Along her keel,” chanted Rodger. 

The next moment, with a mighty 
splash, she took to the water and floated 
there, graceful as a swan. 

“And now,” said Don, “all that re¬ 
mains to do is a little calking here and 
there. Then give us clear sailing and 
we’ll away.” 

It would be hard to describe the feel¬ 
ing of the three boys when, for the first 
time in ten months, they ate their mess 



ICE BOUND 


209 


on deck. It had been a wonderful ex¬ 
perience, this life in an unknown con¬ 
tinent, yet each one of them longed 
with an inutterable longing to be away. 
Perils there were yet before them, 
enough, too, to cause them to think seri¬ 
ously of the immediate future. Out¬ 
side the bay gigantic icebergs, vast ice- 
flows, wild storms awaited them. To 
all these they must give battle before 
reaching the sheltered harbor of De¬ 
ception Bay. 

* * * 

Despite all their rosy dreams of be¬ 
ing away at once, three weeks after her 
launching the schooner was still lying 
in the dark pool of water. A. stubborn 
mass of shifting ice, three miles in 



210 


ICE BOUND 


width, still blocked their passage to the 
open sea and bade fair to be blocking 
it still when the short summer was 
ended and winter came again sweep¬ 
ing down from the frozen south. 

Utterly downhearted, Don had gone 
about the camp for days with scarcely 
a word to say to his companions. 

Then there came a few hours of wild 
excitement; an iceberg had broken 
away from the glacier a half mile to 
the east of them. Having fallen upon a 
shelving bed of rock, it had capsized 
with a mighty splash which sent every 
fragment of sea-ice within five miles 
of it into the wildest sort of commotion. 

As for the schooner, it was for two 
hours in the gravest danger of being 



ICE BOUND 


211 


crushed by the fragments of ice which 
came rushing at it from every side. It 
was only by the most strenuous labor 
at guying dangerous cakes to the shore 
and prodding them to right and left 
of the schooner that the boys were able 
to save her. 

When at last they were given time 
to breathe freely again they found 
themselves in a state of exhaustion. 

Rodger and Ole stretched themselves 
out upon the deck for a rest. Not 
Don. He had discovered something 
which interested him; inspired within 
him a great hope. 

Making his way to land he hurried 
along the shore to the foot of the gla¬ 
cier. There he climbed to a seat on 



212 


ICE BOUND 


a jagged bit of rock and gazed away 
to sea. 

For five solid hours be sat there. 
At times his eyes wandered from the 
surface of the ocean to rest upon the 
seamed walk of ice beside him. Now 
and again he glanced at his watch. 

“Five miles, Fd say, in that many 
hours,” he murmured at last. “Means 
she’ll be clear in two hours. It’s a 
grand idea; if only—” again his eyes 
wandered to the surface of the glacier 
and this time rested on a particular 
spot where a deep crevice ran directly 
across the glacier, seemingly from bank 
to bank. After that he rose to hurry 
back to his companions. 

It was a wild and wonderful scheme 



ICE BOUND 


213 


he had to unfold to them as they sat 
about the table in the forecastle. 

“It sounds impossible enough to be 
interesting at least,” Rodger smiled 
good naturedly. “Don’t see any harm 
in trying it though. When’d you say 
you thought it might come off?” 

“’Bout a week or ten days. Gilacier’s 
moving some five feet or more a day. 
Depends, I suppose, partly on tides and 
storms. Safe for five days; then we’ll 
have to set a watch.” 

When the five days were up the boys 
set a “pup” tent on the rock by the foot 
of the glacier and thereafter twenty- 
four hours a day they kept a sleepless 
vigil in this tent. 



214 


ICE BOUND 


On the night of the sixth day, Ole 
came tearing down the slope, bearing 
under his arm the canvas of the tent. 

“She—she-s off,” he stammered. 

And even as he spoke there came a 
loud report as of a cannon, and the next 
instant the sea was set in wild commo¬ 
tion. A second berg had broken away 
from the glacier. 

“Come on,” cried Don. “It’s now or 
never.” 

If the first iceberg had caused them 
agonizing toil, this second one set every 
muscle, every fiber of their beings to 
aching; for they were striving, not 
alone to save the schooner from destruc¬ 
tion, but to pole her, foot by foot, 



ICE BOUND 


215 


fathom by fathom toward a certain 
spot in the sea; and that spot was not 
far from the base of the glacier. 

The truth was that scarcely had this 
iceberg successfully launched out into 
the deep than an under-current like 
some monster hand had seized it and 
carried it slowly, but surely, in a cir¬ 
cling course to the right and out to 
sea. It left behind it a narrow channel 
of back water, which was, for the time 
being, completely cleared of ice. 

Don’s idea was that if they could but 
reach this open channel before it closed 
they might be able to follow the berg 
to the open sea. 

There was danger enough in the un¬ 
dertaking. Should they come too close 



216 


ICE BOUND 


to the berg and should the berg split 
or capsize, their schooner might be in¬ 
stantly crushed. Should the berg, on 
the other hand, not reach open water, 
they would find themselves in the midst 
of a great floe with no possible means 
of escape. 

“Well, that’s that,” breathed Don, as 
the schooner, with a joyous snort, shot 
out into the clear water of the channel. 

Six anxious hours followed, hours 
which at times seemed to threaten in¬ 
stant destruction. But, at last, the 
steel blue castle of ice drifted through 
the last obstruction, and slowly, so 
slowly that never a wavelet was sent 
against the berg, the little schooner, 
seeming but some floating wild-fowl 



ICE BOUND 


217 


beside the gigantic mass of ice, made 
her way around it and into the open 
sea. 

A hundred miles the little gasoline 
schooner chugged merrily over the 
deep, green sea. Here and there a 
crabbing seal rose to stare at them. 
A wandering snowy petrel paused in 
mid air to make a strange noise at 
them. Once the huge black bulk of a 
killer-whale rose above the sea. Had 
this monster cared to look, he would 
have seen the grinning jaws of one of 
his own kind riding above the boat’s 
prow. Rodger had mounted it there 
like a pirate’s death’s head. 

A fog which had hung low on the 
horizon lifted. The breeze freshened. 



218 


ICE BOUND 


The sun, close to the horizon, began to 
tip the wave points red, pink and gold. 
At that moment, Rodger, who was on 
duty at the wheel, noted two things; 
a storm was coming up out of the 
west. A great, rolling mass of black 
clouds hung there, apparently motion¬ 
less, yet ever increasing in volume. 
Then, too, there appeared before him 
a number of indistinct bulks in the dis¬ 
tance. Had he been on land, he might 
have thought them a chain of freight 
cars standing disconnected on a track. 
But, being at sea, he could for a time 
only ponder their meaning. They ap¬ 
peared to lie across his path, to block 
his way. This troubled him. 

As he came nearer, the cloud to the 



ICE BOUND 


219 


west grew darker, more lowering. He 
wondered if the schooner could weather 
a great storm. 

To the east the sun shone more 
brightly. 

As he came still nearer the chain of 
strange objects, they changed color. 
Those to the west, against the storm 
cloud became black, glistening things, 
like cubes of gunmetal. Those to the 
east against the sun became shining 
masses of white hot steel. It was a 
wonderful sight. 

But what was to be the end of it 
all? These were icebergs, hundreds of 
them, which had broken oft from some 
great continental ice-shelf. Would 



220 


ICE BOUND 


they effectively block the way, driving 
them, step by step, back to the floes? 

Slowly he turned the wheel, first this 
way, then that. Slowly, surely, he 
neared the center of the great proces¬ 
sion. Slowly, but surely, the storm 
cloud advanced. 

Now he discovered broad breaks in 
the procession of icebergs. If he could 
but reach them before the storm ar¬ 
rived all would be well; he would pass 
unharmed and the ice would serve as 
a shelter from the storm. 

Now they were five miles away, now 
three, now two, now one. And as the 
storm queen appeared to lift her dark 
skirts for a wild on-rush, they found 



ICE BOUND 


221 


themselves between towering walls of 
ice. 

The sound of the engine grew into 
a deafening roar as it was echoed and 
re-echoed by those icy precipices. 

And now, now they had passed the 
danger-point. They were safe on the 
other side. 

A half mile from the icebergs the 
engine ceased its throbbing. Here they 
would await the coming of the storm. 
And it came. With wild on-rushes of 
wind, with torrents of rain it tore the 
ocean into foam, then beat it into 
silence. But, sheltered in the lea of 
a giant berg, the little schooner rocked 
peacefully on until the storm had 
passed, until the sun came out and the 



222 


ICE BOUND 


bergs once ore were fired with all 
the glorious hues of a rainbow and a 
sunset. 

“Some day,” said Rodger, as he stood 
beside Don, who was at the wheel, “I’m 
going back there. I’ll pass those gates 
of shining gunmetal and flaming molten 
steel and I’ll go back to that unknown 
continent. I’ll go to the South Pole. 
I’ll explore that smoking mountain far 
to the south. If there’s gold, I’ll 
assay it and, if diamonds, as there 
are in all other lands of the Southern 
Hemisphere, I’ll gather them in bushel 
baskets. Perhaps,” he laughed, “I shall 
discover the Great Carbunkle, or a 
diamond as big as a ship.” 

“Some day,” Don laughed back whole- 



ICE BOUND 


223 


heartedly, “I’m going to tuck my feet 
under a table about which are gathered 
smiling women and laughing children, 
as well as jolly men; where you can 
see flowers blooming, and trees waving 
their branches; where you can hear the 
grass grow. That’s life for me.” 

In due time the schooner came pop¬ 
popping into the harbor at Deception 
Island. The boys were received as 
those who have returned from the dead. 
Many and loud were the exclamations 
over their story of strange adventure. 

In turn, they were informed that a 
strange whaler had put in at the harbor 
just before the freeze-up and that she 
had carried on board food enough for 



224 


ICE BOUND 


all; so there had been no suffering for 
lack of supplies. 

“I am glad,” said Rodger soberly, 
“for I should not like to have anyone 
suffer for my mistakes. But since it 
has been as it is, I am glad, too, that 
we were shanghaied by an ice floe, for 
we have seen such things as few have 
been privileged to see and had experi¬ 
ences such as may never come to us 
again.” 

When the boys had rested for a time 
at the whaling station, they thought 
once more of home. Then, too, there 
came to them the old desire to hunt out 
the island on which the mysterious 
Pendulum Cove was located and to 
make one determined search for the old 




pm 


/V' ^ ■ ■ i 






•Xv# ;•■•:•:•:*: 


M 


— 

>■«»+«■ iiiinn < 


• •**+•* m 


<44 W iii n ii Mi•-••’ .’j^n i li i 




-wa 


»—» X , tt tTTtr 


vXy/X 






“7 am glad ” 


said Rodger, soberly 


225 



















































































































. 








































. 



















































ICE BOUND 


227 


sailor’s gold mine. After much discus¬ 
sion, it was decided that, since it was 
still early in the season, thej^ should 
take a course which must bring them 
into the neighborhood of the island of 
gold, and which, at the same time, would 
take them many miles nearer home. It 
was under these conditions then that 
they once more set sail, little dreaming 
how many days would pass before their 
schooner cleared the wharfs of Punta 
Arenas. 



CHAPTER X 

Pendulum Cove 

A storm was rising. The boys in 
their little schooner were skirting the 
shore of a rocky island. Here and 
there great glaciers dipped their giant 
white points into the sea, while in the 
ocean, three monster icebergs, but re¬ 
cently formed, threatened to block 
their way. There was something 
strangely familiar about the general 


228 


ICE BOUND 


229 


form of the island, and finally Don ven-i 
tured to state that he believed this was 
the old sailor’s island. 

“If it is,” said Rodger, “there should 
he a narrow opening on this side, the 
entrance to an inland bay of volcanic 
origin; and it will be well for us if we 
find it, for there’s going to be a rough 
sea.” 

He wrinkled his brow as he looked 
away at the racing clouds. It was 
plain that Don shared his opinion. 

“See! There it is!” exclaimed Rodger, 
pointing away shoreward. And there, 
indeed, was a narrow opening in the 
rocky shore. 

Soon they were passing through a 
narrow channel scarcely wide enough 



230 


ICE B O U ND 


for a good-sized whaler to enter, but 
quite ample for their slight craft. 

Once they were inside, their eyes 
opened wide with admiration and won¬ 
der. Here in the center of the island 
lay an inland bay, just as the old sailor 
had described it. The water was so 
smooth that it mirrored the snowy 
mountains that towered above it. Here 
and there a snowy petrel skimmed 
across its surface, or a penguin rose 
from his fishing. Here and there on 
the shore came the scream of a great 
w r hite gull or the shrill call of a cor¬ 
morant. And from every shore there 
arose the steam and vapors of the hot 
springs of which the old man had 
spoken. This, and the circular form 



ICE BOUND 


231 


of the bay, told plainly that the island 
was volcanic in origin. The boys asked 
themselves with a little tremble 
whether it might not still be active. 
They were somewhat reassured, how¬ 
ever, when they discovered on the right 
bank a few buildings which had been 
erected some time past by sealers. 
These they found deserted. 

The boys did not linger long to ex¬ 
amine the buildings. There was noth¬ 
ing there for them. They consulted 
tneir maps and set out at once across 
the bay to what must at one time have 
been Pendulum Cove. Since they were 
storm-bound, they were determined to 
make the best possible use of the time. 
They found, just as the old sailor had 



232 


ICE BOUND 


said, that the cove had disappeared. 
There was now only a low-lying valley, 
indicating that at some earlier date 
there might have been a cove there 
which was later filled with the wash 
from the shore, or with volcanic ash. 
Here, at the present time, they were 
unable even to find an anchoring for 
their schooner. The bed of the bay 
was of solid rock. They had counted 
on all this, however. The sun, shining 
all day and all night had thawed the 
earth to a depth of four or five feet. In 
Alaska, rich mines had been discov¬ 
ered by digging to a lesser depth than 
this. Why not here? 

It was very apparent that the little 
gulch in which they were planning to 



ICE BOUND 


233 


work had at one time been the bed of 
a glacier. Some unseen power had re¬ 
moved this glacier and filled its bed in 
with gravel, rocks and sand. What the 
unseen power had been was not hard to 
guess. 

The island was not destitute of gla¬ 
ciers, however. On every side they 
came gleaming down to the water’s 
edge like giant white serpents. The 
schooner had been anchored at the 
mouth of the bay. They never at¬ 
tempted to return to it by land; to have 
done so would have been a hard and 
dangerous task. 

What they meant to do was to sink 
shafts here and there through the 
earth to the bed-rock and to discover, 



234 


ICE BOUND 


if possible, whether there were still 
other gold nuggets in the sand which 
had been the bed of the stream. 

To do this required days of arduous 
toil, but at last one day Don, who was 
working at the bottom of a shaft, gave 
a little shout of joy and looking up at 
his companions said: 

“Catch!” 

In another instant Rodger held in 
his hand a hard, heavy yellow bit of 
shining metal. Then how their hopes 
mounted! Were they to become men 
of great fortunes by this re-discovery 
of gold in the desert lands of the south'? 
What might not yet be before them! 

But as they drifted on along the 
rocky bottom of the former glacier’s 



ICE BOUND 


235 


bed they found themselves disap¬ 
pointed. True, every pan brought them 
a little gold, and now and again there 
was a sizable nugget. But they were 
not getting rich fast. They were earn¬ 
ing great wages, but that was all. Each 
day, however, they assured themselves 
they would come upon the “pocket” 
where gold might be panned in basins 
full. So they worked, scarcely count¬ 
ing the days that were passing. 

“Say!” exclaimed Don one morning. 
“It’s the twentieth of January. We 
have only ten more days before we 
must begin our journey home; unless 
we are to spend another winter in the 
Antarctic.” 

“I guess we don’t want to do that, 



236 


ICE BOUND 


Rodger frowned. “It looks as if we’d 
have to plan to get out of here within 
a week and leave our fortune for some 
other time or to someone else. It’s a 
shame, too!” 

But Don was hardly listening to him. 
He was looking away at a geyser-like 
spring of hot water which they had 
named “Old Faithful.” It seemed to 
him as he looked, that its volume of 
steam had doubled and was increasing 
even as he watched it. 

“Rodger,” he exclaimed in awe¬ 
struck tone. “Look at Old Faithful. 
Do you think—” 

But Rodger had jumped to his feet 
with a startled cry. He was looking 
toward the side of the bay on which 



ICE BOUND 


237 


their schooner lay. There, where but 
faint jets of steam had been seen be¬ 
fore, were great columns of smoke¬ 
like steam, three of them, any one of 
which was far greater in magnitude 
than Old Faithful had ever been. 

Don was long in going to sleep that 
night. The increase in volcanic activi¬ 
ties about the cove filled him with a 
thousand fears. What if the island 
should suddenly become all afire, or a 
scalding caldron of steam? What if 
their schooner should be buried by sud¬ 
den eruptions or steamed into a mass 
of warped and twisted timbers? What 
chance would there be, even if they 
succeeded in escaping to safer surfaces 
of the island, of their ever getting back 



238 


ICE BOUND 


to their native land. They were hun¬ 
dreds of miles from any whaling sta¬ 
tion. Whale ships did not enter this 
harbor; the entrance was too narrow, 
the whole aspect of the place too for¬ 
bidding. They could live on penguin 
meat for a time; perhaps always. A 
correct balance of lean and fat meat 
would sustain the life of a white man 
indefinitely; Stefansson, during his so¬ 
journ in Arctic regions, had proved 
that. But what joy could there be in 
clinging to life, if they were to be 
Robinson Crusoes in such a desolate 
land? 

So his mind ran on, until at last sleep 
claimed him and carried him away to 
the land of dreams. 



ICE BOUND 


239 


Some hours later Don awoke with 
a stifling sensation. Looking out into 
the night, he felt that the world was 
burning up. All about him there rose 
columns of steam towering toward the 
sky, reflecting the lurid light of fires 
that seemed to have burst forth from 
beneath the very sea. 

Don awoke with a start. Ole was 
shaken into wakefulness, and once they 
were fully aroused to the danger they 
were in, they hastily drew on clothing 
and made their way to the shore of the 
bay where their dory lay. From that 
side the wind blew and they were at 
once compelled to abandon the thought 
of reaching their schooner by water. 
Should they attempt it, they were 



240 


ICE BOUND 


likely to be boiled alive by the steam 
that swept across the bay. 

“The gold!” Don exclaimed, as they 
made their way back toward the upper 
slope where the glaciers lay. “Have 
you got the gold?” 

“Tied in a sack slung across my 
shoulder,” panted Rodger. 

“If it’s too heavy, give me part,” 
said Don, quickening his steps as he 
felt the hot steam entering his lungs. 

For a moment they paused at the 
steep side of a great glacier. How they 
wished they had heeded the warning 
of Old Faithful and the three new 
steam-jets of the evening before. But 
they had wanted so much to have one 



ICE BOUND 


241 


more try at the “pocket,” which they 
felt sure must not be far away now. 

“We’ve got to try the glacier now!” 
exclaimed Rodger. “It’s our only 
chance!” 

“I know it,” said Don, producing a 
small rope. “Take hold of this bo‘th of 
you and we’ll help one another as much 
as we can.” 

Slowly they made the ascent of the 
steep, icy slope Already the ice was 
slippery with steam. Here they were 
obliged to cut steps in the solid ice with 
their knives, and here they skirted 
narrow ledges of rock jutting out from 
the glacier. Finally they reached the 
summit and heaved a sigh of relief. 
But this relief lasted for but a moment. 



242 


ICE BOUND 


The entire upper surface of the glacier 
seemed to be torn and seamed with 
crevices. It was even now creaking 
and grinding as if it would tear itself 
in bits and crush them beneath an 
avalanche of fragments. Slowly, pain¬ 
fully, with many a slip, they made their 
way along its edge, hoping against 
hope, to find a place where it might be 
crossed. 

“And if we ever get across this one, 
we have still three others!” groaned 
Don, tightening his grip on the rope, 
as Rodger came perilously near a slide 
into some unknown depths below. 

“I wonder what it’s like down where 
the schooner is?” said Rodger, getting 
a fresh start. 



ICE BOUND 


243 


“The wind’s from that direction. I 
believe we can make it if—” 

He did not finish the sentence. There 
was a sickening slide, and Don felt the 
small rope burn through his fingers. 

Listening, he heard a swash as 
Rodger fell in the water thirty feet 
below. “Are you hurt?” he shouted 
down. 

For a moment there was no answer, 
then came back: 

“No, but it’s awful wet down here. 
Give me a hand, you two, and let me 
see if I can climb out.” 

The two boys on the ice-cliff above 
pulled on the rope, but Rodger fell 
back time and again. The ice was so 
smooth, he could get no footing. 



244 


ICE BOUND 


In the meantime, the steam from 
the thawing island of ice was driving 
his companions to despair. 

“Cut notches as you go and make 
sure of them. Hurry!” Don cried. 
“The steam is getting awful!” 

He stretched himself down on the 
ice and listened to the work of Rodger 
as he cut his way to liberty. At last, 
with a great effort, they dragged him 
to the surface and a few moments later 
discovered a bridge of snow that took 
them safely across the glacier. Then 
followed a second glacier which was 
not quite so badly seamed. 

They were making fair progress and 
their spirits were rising when Don gave 
a new cry of alarm: 



ICE BOUND 


245 


“Look!” he said, pointing to the end 
of the third glacier that jutted down 
to the water. There a fire had sprung 
right from the rocks and the sputtering 
of the ice as it came in contact with 
the fire was like the booming of a hun¬ 
dred cannons. They could not hear one 
another speak for the intonations. 

“Come on!” shouted Rodger, dodging 
low to escape the steam. 

Slowly they made their way up the 
glacier to a point where they were safe 
from this new peril. Then they began 
again the slow and painful process of 
crossing the glacier which, like the first, 
was full of dangerous crevices. 

Once they had crossed this, there re¬ 
mained but the clambering down the 



246 


ICE BOUND 


steep side of the glacier to the slender 
bit of beach which they knew would 
lead them to their schooner. 

But what of the schooner? This was 
the question which their anxious minds 
were constantly asking. If steam en¬ 
shrouded her; if fresh volcanic fires had 
shut out their way, they were lost; for 
who knew how great would become the 
violence of this volcanic action which 
had so strangely broken out anew on 
this mysterious isle? 

Anxiously they made their way down 
the steep side of the glacier until, little 
by little, they had lessened the distance 
to a few feet, when with wildly beating 
hearts they slid the balance of the way, 



ICE BOUND 


247 


and their feet touched the rough gravel 
beach. 

Hastening around the point they 
came in sight of the cove where their 
schooner lay. 

“There she is!” exclaimed Rodger, 
almost dropping to his knees in his ex¬ 
citement and joy. “And she’s safe!” 

“And we can reach her!” exclaimed 
Don. 

But in another instant there came 
the question, “How?” They no longer 
had their dory. That was on the steam- 
heated shore far away. The schooner 
was anchored away from shore. The 
air might be superheated with steam, 
but the Antarctic water was chilled 
with ice. 



248 


ICE BOUND 


“Can you swim it?” asked Don. 

“I believe I can make it,” said 
Rodger, throwing off his coat. 

In an instant he was out of his heavy 
clothing, and was plunging in the water 
and swimming strongly toward the 
schooner. It was a hard pull. As Don 
watched him, he had a moment to look 
away at the terrible and wonderful fight 
of the elements. Fire and water, cold 
and heat battled for possession of the 
strange.and terrible island of Antarctic 
seas. But his thoughts were arrested 
by a shout from Rodger, who had re¬ 
gained the ship. He was already start¬ 
ing the engine. Soon he was pop-pop¬ 
ping toward the shore at a point where 
there was a rocky cove making a deep 



ICE BOUND 


249 


beach water. His companions hurried 
on board. 

An hour later the little schooner lay 
away a half mile from the island, while 
its masters sat on the deck and watched 
the ipost wonderful spectacle they had 
ever witnessed. From this distance 
they could get a new and interesting 
view of the natural phenomena which 
were occurring on the island. Great 
icebergs, which had recently been 
broken from the glacier, turned over 
and over in the sea as the heat-waves 
struck them. They seemed to fairly 
rocket through the water, while now 
and again the end of a glacier would 
explode with the sound of a great 
howitzer. These, in turn, reflected the 



250 


ICE BOUND 


red glow of the fire-pits which burned 
here and there on the rocky surface of 
the island. 

The water all about them swarmed 
with wild things driven from their 
homes. Seals and sea-lions darted 
through the waters, penguins skimmed 
along on its surface, while gulls and 
snowy petrel shot over its surface. 
And here and there a great black whale 
lifted an inquiring head above the rip¬ 
pling waves. 

“Well,” said Don at last. “We’re 
well out of that. I’m all for going 
home.” 

He turned toward the wheel. Then 
he gave an ejaculation of surprise. 
Something was pulling at the belt. 



ICE BOUND 


251 


“Why! It’s the gold!” he exclaimed. 
“I’d forgotten we had it!” 

“How much is there of it?” asked 
Rodger. 

By the light of the flaming island 
they weighed the gold they had taken 
from it, and each calculated in his own 
way what it would secure for him in 
their own quiet home-land. It would 
not do wonders, but it would give them 
a start in life. 

“Well,” said Don finally. “I’m glad 
we came, but for myself, I’m one who 
will never go back.” 

“And I’m another!” exclaimed Ole. 

“Think!” said Rodger. “Wouldn’t 
the world go mad if we were to tell 
them where we found this gold!” 



252 


ICE BOUND 


“Wouldn’t they? But are we going 
to tell them?” asked Don thoughtfully. 

Five days later the little party of 
young adventurers, having met with no 
further mishap, steered their schooner 
into their home harbor. It was a wildly 
excited group of town boys who 
escorted them home and devoutly 
thankful families they returned to. 

The gold quartz found on the Ant¬ 
arctic Continent proved to be of too 
low a grade to be of any real value. 
The supposed diamonds were mere glis¬ 
tening pebbles of no real value. The 
gold taken from Pendulum Cove fully 
paid for all the supplies used on the 
trip and the sale of Rodger’s collection 
to a museum netted a neat sum, which 



ICE BOUND 


253 


he, very generously, shared with his two 
companions. So the boys found that 
the year had not been an unprofitable 
one from the standpoint of finances 
and they had gained a wealth of experi¬ 
ence which would endure throughout 
their lives. 













DENTON S 

BEST PLAYS 

AND 

DIALOGUES 

1 THE HAPPY BOOK of STAGELAND ] 

bJritien by 

| CLARA J. DENTON * 

JEt Author of New Program Booh,Little 
* Actors Pleij5 ; Bu5Lj Little Birds , etc. *** 



ILLUSTRATED BY 

MARJORIE HOWE DIXON 

A xlust Right Book’ 

PUBLISH CD BY 

ALBERT WHITMAN COMPANY 



























































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The 


Circus Boys 

or 

The Novelty Circus Company 


By 

FRANK G. OLIVER 

Author of “The Athletic Boys/’ etc. 


CHICAGO 

ALBERT WHITMAN & COMPANY 


PUBLISHERS 


























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